The Chesapeake Ripper had escaped. Someone shot up the van carrying Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, and several officers. Rumour said it was the Tooth Fairy. Rumour said it was the Great Red Dragon. Rumour said Will Graham had something to do with the whole thing.
Freddie Lounds snapped a large picture of the wreckage. She almost got one of Jack Crawford, striding past overturned cars and corpses riddled with bullet wounds. He kept his emotions in check, but the tabloid reporter could read the rage…and the utter lack of surprise.
This must have been part of Agent Crawford’s plan, only it had gone completely wrong.
One of the police cars was taken. It took a while to trace it, but eventually it was found at a house on the bluffs over a cliff.
Another body was found outside a shattered window, covered with wounds. The body of Francis Dolarhyde, the Tooth Fairy or the Great Red Dragon, depending on what readers decided to call him.
***
Jack Crawford looked down at the corpse. Miriam Lass stood, gazing around the furniture, the bluff, as twitchy as a rabbit ready to bolt, but she stood her ground.
“Something about this particular corpse disturbing you, Lass?” Jack wouldn’t think twice of coddling her, for which she was grateful.
“No, sir.” Miriam shook her head, closed her eyes. “I’ve been here before.”
Chamber music battled with the whistle of the wind within her ears. Miriam fought off the temporary fugue, looked around for her partner.
Clarice Starling stood on the edge of the bluff, wind tugging at her dreadlocks, flapping the corners of her coat. “Over here.”
She spoke in a hushed voice, too hushed to compete with the ocean, but Jack and Miriam heard.
Jack took several steps forward, only to stop as if he didn’t want to look or know.
Miriam pushed a strand of hair off her face with her artificial hand, using fingers that moved with awkward slowness. It was still hard to think of those fingers as hers. It had been a struggle to think of the hand as hers. “They went over the cliff. The Chesapeake Ripper…and Will Graham.”
“The Devil and the Lamb of God.” Jack closed his eyes, turning his face away so Miriam couldn’t see him. “It should be the end. It would be the end of any normal human being.”
“Only the Chesapeake Ripper wasn’t normal.” It was an effort to keep her voice even, but Miriam managed.
“Neither of them were.” Clarice raised her voice just a little. For the first time, Miriam noticed a similarity between her friend and the mysterious young profiler who’d…sacrificed himself to take down a dangerous killer. Two dangerous killers. Not to mention countless others. “This may be where things get truly horrifying for Will Graham.”
Clarice locked her green eyes onto Jack Crawford, silently challenging him.
Jack didn’t take the challenge. He simply bowed his head.
****
No one could have survived the fall from the cliff. No one normal.
Divers searched the waters below the house, but no bodies were found. The only one accounted for was Francis Dolarhyde.
Another mess faced Kade Purnell’s desk, a mess with Will Graham’s name on it. She was getting very tired of such messes.
***
It was a little late to try to break the news to Molly and Walter gently. It was blaring from the televisions in the hospital.
Molly had recovered considerably. She was almost ready to go home, once it was safe to go home. Only she heard the news, talking at her from the television. Francis Dolarhyde, the man who tried to kill her son and herself was dead. He appeared to have been killed by Hannibal Lecter, the escaped Chesapeake Ripper. The Ripper appeared to have been helped by Special Agent Will Graham. Graham appeared to have killed himself and the Ripper by jumping off the ciff, taking Lecter with him. Very little was known yet. Their bodies had yet to be recovered.
Molly froze, in the middle of getting dressed, listening.
***
The woman who might well be Will Graham’s widow marched through the halls of the F.B.I, not looking left or right, only straight ahead. She kept her face frozen in a mask of rage, ready to turn it on anyone who tried to stop her.
She grabbed an older man in a white coat whose path was crossing hers. She leaned close to his face, gripping his lapels.
“Where is he?” Molly demanded in a tight, even voice more menacing than a scream. “Where is Jack Crawford?”
Her captive exchanged a unhappy glance with a younger, dark-haired man in a similar white coat. The second man glowered at her, ready to retrieve his colleague from her grip, only her captive shook his head. Neither of them seemed to know what to do. The professional thing to do would be to get in her way. Let them try.
“You must be Agent Price.” She glanced from the man whose coat she gripped to the other. “And you must be Agent Zeller. Beverly Katz’s colleagues. My husband told me about you. Do you know who I am?”
The last word rose with menacing suggestiveness. The two men hesitated. The older one dropped his head, hanging in her grip. The other avoided her stare.
They didn’t matter. It wasn’t their eyes Molly wanted to claw out. It was Jack Crawford’s.
“You must be Molly.” A young woman’s voice, slightly sharper, yet similar to Will’s in its intonation stopped Molly in her tracks.
She released Jimmy Price and turned to face the owner of that voice.
The speaker gestured to a corridor with a slim hand. Her calm might have been contagious if Molly hadn’t been so angry.
Molly took a moment to stare at the young woman in silence. She was about the same height as Molly, wearing a grayish-green coat and slacks as if she’d just come in from indoors.
“Jack Crawford is is his office.” Penetrating hazel eyes as keen as Will’s fixed themselves upon Molly from a dark, heart-shaped face, darker than Jack Crawford, with sharp cheekbones that gave their owner a hollow, hungry look. “It’s three doors down to the right.”
Molly didn’t want to look into those luminous eyes. Pain clutched at her chest, threatening to let loose a scream, which she refused to let go.
She stomped instead, moving into the corridor in question, aware of the female agent padding behind her. This girl, this trainee? didn’t matter either.
What mattered was the door with the name ‘Jack Crawford’ upon it three doors down.
Molly didn’t bother to knock. She flung the door open.
***
People milled around the candles in the Norman Chapel, lighting them.
Miriam Lass was talking to him, trying to tell him something. Perhaps urging him to leave.
No. Jack Crawford stayed seated in the pew, waiting. He was going to light a candle for Will Graham. Perhaps for Hannibal Lecter, too.
He focused on the tiny flames, looked down at the glasses in his hands.
Will had been wearing them when he lectured at the academy right before Jack approached him about the Garrett Jacob Hobbs case. He hadn’t actually needed them. Rather like Jack didn’t need religion, not really.
“If you can’t rely on anyone, you must rely on God.” Such useless advice Hannibal gave. Perhaps it had been a way to misdirect people, only it hadn’t been that simple.
With Hannibal Lecter, it never had been.
If Jack looked ahead, through the crowd, he might see Hannibal and Will, sitting next to each other right before the altar. Not touching each other, their bodies at a slight angle. Hannibal kept gazing at Will. Will kept his eyes closed, not looking at anything or anyone.
Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to see them, to picture them in this place together. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to let go of the vision.
He could feel Molly standing at the door of the Normal Chapel, Clarice Starling at her side. Smart of them to find this place. He could feel Molly’s anger, her reciminations.
Yes, he deserved them just as he’d deserved Alana Bloom’s. Only he couldn’t bring himself to face them.
Please. He didn’t say the word out loud, but he prayed silently. Just let me light the candle first.
****
Jack Crawford wasn’t sitting at his desk. He was in a nearby chair, holding a pair of glasses in his hands, turning them over. He didn’t look at her, even seem to notice her. He just stared at the spectacles with moist eyes, seeing them, yet not seeing them.
Molly recognized the glasses even though Will seldom wore them after marrying her. She recalled his embarrassed laugh, the way he’d run a hand through his hair, before admitting that he hadn’t really needed them.
Jack Crawford gazed at those innocuous things as if he couldn’t believe they were there. His were eyes filled of raw, wet sorrow.
She’d seen the same rawness in her own, when she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror at the hospital. She’d finally been able to walk again. Not long after that, Wally came into her room and hugged her.
Some of the rawness left her when she hugged him back. No, she hadn’t lost her son. That man hadn’t taken him from her. Neither of those men, those killers had gotten her boy. Not the one who’d shot her, nor the one who’d sent him.
How many sons had they taken? For the first time she realized that Jack Crawford had sacrificed his own son to keep them from doing it again. Only the killers had gotten Will.
All the anger ran out of Molly. She felt her shoulders slump.
“Agent Crawford hasn’t spoken since Will Graham went over the cliff.” Another young woman with pale skin and long blonde hair tied back from her severe face sat in the chair next to Jack, facing him. “There are some things you just can’t talk about.”
“It’s his fault.” Molly mouthed the words, but she no longer felt the fury she’d intended to hurl at Crawford with each accusation. “He manipulated Will into going after that man. He drew Will back into his world, their world.”
“Don’t blame Jack for your loss.” Hard, blue eyes, like shiny marbles infused with cloudy drama fixed themselves upon Molly. “Once the Chesapeake Ripper gets hold of you, he never lets go.” She twisted her mouth into a grimace. “Never.”
Molly stared at the young woman, the way her lower lip trembled slightly. “Who are you?”
“That’s Miriam Lass.” The young agent who’d followed Molly took her arm, guiding her out of the room. The other girl, Miriam, turned away, continuing her vigil over the silent Jack Crawford, if vigil it was. “Perhaps Will mentioned her?”
“The trainee Hannibal Lecter kidnapped and mutilated, while convincing everyone, including her that the Chesapeake Ripper was Dr. Chilton.” Molly allowed herself to be drawn into the hall and lead to a seat. “Miriam Lass shot Dr. Chilton in the face.”
“That’s a mistake she has to live with.” The young woman sat down on the bench with a sigh and looked up at Molly. “How much do you know?”
“Will never lied to me about his relationship with Hannibal Lecter. Nor did he tell me everything.” Molly sat down with a heavy thump next to the agent. “I didn’t realize how dangerous my own relationship with Will was, until that man came after my son and myself.”
She wasn’t going to call Francis Dolarhyde the Great Red Dragon. Nor would she refer to Hannibal Lecter as the Chesapeake Ripper. That was giving both of them a grandeur they didn’t deserve. Never mind that they’d ruined her life, just as they’d stolen Will’s.
“Do you think Will is dead?” The young woman asked the question in a very soft voice. She reached out a hand for Molly’s.
Molly let her hand be taken. The other woman’s skin was warm, her fingers strong. “Do I think my husband survived a fall from a cliff, only to fake his own death, fleeing with the man who tried to kill my son and I, not to mention Will himself?” Molly let out a short, bitter laugh. “Even if it’s possible, I’d rather not believe it.”
“Your husband may be dead. Will Graham may have survived, along with Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He may be on the run with him, just as you’d rather not believe. Those are two possible outcomes.” The agent tightened her fingers around Molly’s. “There are others. One is that Will survived the fall, but Dr. Lecter didn’t.”
“You said there were others. Other possible outcomes, plural.” Molly felt her own lip tremble. “Go ahead. Tell me what they are.”
“There is a possibility that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are alive, but your husband is Dr. Lecter’s prisoner.” The female agent looked down at their interlocked fingers. “The Chesapeake Ripper’s prisoners never survive intact.”
Molly forced her mouth into a smile that hurt. “Agent…?”
“Starling. Clarice Starling.” Clarice Starling offered a bitter smile of her own. “I was Miriam Lass’s roommate at the academy before the Ripper kidnapped her.” She let out a humourless chuckle. “Believe me, I know something of what you’re going through.”
“Believe me, you don’t.” Molly could feel the tears building up behind her own eyes. “Hannibal Lecter let Miriam Lass go. He never let Will go. Never.” She shook her head. “I was only too well aware of that when I lay in that hospital bed after Lecter sent a man to kill me. When I looked into my husband’s eyes.”
Those haunted, beautiful green eyes, which never lost the shadows gathered beneath them, no matter how much Will might smile or laugh.
“I sometimes look in Miriam’s eyes and feel the same way. Like she’s somehow still with the Ripper, even though she’s right next to me.” Clarice Starling squeezed Molly’s fingers again. “Don’t give up on Will. He may need you now more than he ever has. Don’t abandon him.”
“There’s a big difference, Agent Starling.” Molly pulled her hand free. “Your Miriam Lass may still be Hannibal’s prisoner, but she wants to escape.” Molly stood up. “I’m not sure if Will wants to.”
“What are you afraid of, Molly?” The young F.B.I. agent’s voice was gentle but there was a fierce directness to her indirect question. “If we investigate the disappearance of your husband, what are you afraid we’ll find?”
“What am I afraid of?” Molly let out a harsh laugh, letting the truth spill from her lips. “I’m afraid my husband was never my husband. I’m afraid that the moment Will died, he belonged to Hannibal Lecter.” The man’s name tasted like poison in her mouth. Molly forced herself to spit it out. “I’m afraid that Will didn’t die and that he belongs to Hannibal Lecter. I’m afraid that our marriage, our family, everything Will and I had together was nothing compared to Hannibal Lecter. That Will Graham, the man I loved, who got closer to me than anyone was always Hannibal Lecter’s!”
Clarice Starling nodded, eyes soft with understanding, something gentler than sympathy. It was a look Molly had seen in Will’s eyes only to often. It was maddening to see it now.
“You want to chase this, Agent Starling? To chase Will only to find that answer? I don’t!” Molly rose to her feet, avoiding the younger woman’s gaze. She turned and began walking back the way she came.
Clarice watched her go, clenching her hand into a fist.