On the first truly cold day of the season, which heralds the oncoming winter, Bedelia DuMaurier is laid in the ground. Hannibal wears an understated suit of charcoal grey virgin wool. A deep claret cashmere scarf is wound around his neck and falls along the placket of his bespoke frock coat.
Attendance is sparse at the memorial, and sparser graveside, but Hannibal does not endure the endless distasteful sermonizing without reason. Peripheral to the small group of largely dry-eyed mourners is a slim man in an ill-fitting suit. He doesn't stand so much as hover, shifting from foot to foot, kinetic. He is swaddled in a too-large corduroy barn coat and wears a wool fisherman's cap, but is obviously still freezing.
The first cold snap is always a hard fall. Human memory is poor, and lulled into complacency by the respite of Indian summer, year after year.
The man grimaces and blows into ungloved hands, breath rising from the cup of his palms. This must, Hannibal thinks, be Will Graham.
What strikes Hannibal most resoundingly about the man is not the list of ways in which the two of them are different from one another-Hannibal is clean shaven and groomed where Will has wild curls emerging from underneath the hat and the shadow of a beard tracing his jawline. It is the way in which they are different together. Despite a body that rolls and wavers like television static, Will Graham places his gaze not only with intent but with acuity. He transcribes each detail of the headstone, traces the entire line of the low horizon, notes the minute imbalances in the cradle of rope used to lower Bedelia DuMaurier's coffin into the hard earth. His brow is furrowed, face clouded but eyes clear, very clear. He looks, and he sees all, with the exception of faces, which allows Hannibal to study his without interruption.
It is the unequivocal fulfillment of a two-year dialogue, by which Hannibal remains faceless yet eminently perceived.
Which is why he is careful, as he steps toward the road and then turns for a final look at Bedelia's resting place, to train his focus on the open ground before them, and not at the man beside him.
"Did you know her well?" Hannibal asks.
In his peripheral field, he sees Graham shake his head. "Uh, no. Not really," he says. "Did you?"
"We were colleagues," says Hannibal. "Though I had not seen her in a long time. I saw the article in the newspaper. Very shocking."
"Not really," Graham says.
"Hm. Do you know how it happened, if it isn't improper to ask? I read only that the police think it was an attack by a patient."
"The same patient who attacked her five and a half months ago. That didn't make the papers."
Hannibal detects the barest note of something hidden in Graham's bitter words. Guilt? "You say you did not know her well. Yet you seem to know quite a bit about the circumstances of her death. May I ask, are you with the police?"
Graham laughs, shakes his head again. "No. FBI."
"Then it is certainly a more complicated matter than I had thought," says Hannibal.
For the first time, Graham looks over at him, not at his eyes but at his mouth instead. "No, sorry," he says. "They have the patient in custody. It's not a federal matter. Bedelia-uh, Dr. DuMaurier-consulted for us, occasionally. The Behavioral Analysis Unit."
"I see. In that case, I am sorry for your loss. She was...uniquely perceptive."
"Yeah, actually. She was," says Graham.
Hannibal extends his hand, shielded as it is with a lambskin glove. "Hannibal Lecter."
Graham returns the handshake, but still does not make eye contact. "Will Graham."
The cold of Will's hand permeates the leather. In tightening his grip, Hannibal takes a moment to play his fingertips across the thin but strong metacarpal bones, manipulating...barely, barely. The cool impression remains after the contact ends. Will's nose and cheeks are red.
"So you're also a psychiatrist?" Will asks. "We could use another professional to consult."
"I am. And you do not mince words," Hannibal says.
Will's blush is visible even on the wind-chapped cheeks. Hannibal smells the blood beneath his skin. There is something odd about it, a fleeting top note to Will's peculiar fragrance, and it irritates him that he cannot quite identify it.
"Sorry," Will says. "I'm really not very good in situations like this. Or any situation."
"I doubt that's true," says Hannibal, "Or you wouldn't have the job you do."
Will watches his shoes shift on the frozen ground. "You're right. I'm good at one thing. I'm a very specialized tool."
There is bitterness in the statement, but also a kind of detached awe, as if Will places his ability somehow outside of himself, marked as other.
"Now you have my interest," Hannibal says. "Would you care to talk further?" The bright stones of the trail ahead are revealed in swift waves like the raising of gooseflesh, illuminating the direction in which he already looks.
"I don't think I can handle being psychoanalyzed today," says Will.
"No analysis," Hannibal says. " I only offer an ear, not an opinion, unless you say otherwise."
Will laughs again. For the first time in a long while, Hannibal enjoys the way a sound splits the silence, only because it is unexpected. In his practice, and elsewhere, he has become far too used to hearing misery wrung from placid faces; it excites him to hear mirth from one so grim. It frost-rimed spring set against a late-falling warm spell-one easily crushed once the tough exterior is shattered, but the other robust in its insubordination to encroaching gloom.
"I can honestly say this is a first," Will says. "A happy hour bitch session about work after a funeral. A little inappropriate if you think about it."
"On the contrary," says Hannibal. "I believe holding a conversation honors Bedelia. Talk is, after all, what she did best."
"Fair enough," Will says, removing his cap and scrubbing his palm over his mussed hair. The tracery of vapor released is only just visible against a sky threatening snow. "Do you know of any good places to get a coffee? I don't live around here."
"As a matter of fact," Hannibal says, "I know the perfect place."
"This looks like a house," Will says, as Hannibal guides his Bentley into the cul-de-sac.
"This is my house," Hannibal tells him, turning the car into the driveway.
"Unorthodox," says Will, but Hannibal sees his fingers flex as he grips the door handle tighter. He has rested at least one hand on it during the entire ride.
"What is there to apply orthodoxy to? You yourself remarked on the unusual nature of our meeting." Hannibal pauses, turns the key; the engine flutters and is still. "And besides, you are not my patient."
"I don't want to impose," says Will. His eyes, pupils in pinpoint, flicker back and forth over the interior of the car.
"It's no imposition. I had planned to cook for one, but I always make too much." Hannibal opens the passenger side door. "And I detest leftovers.
Will waits a beat before unlatching his seatbelt. When he glances up to see that Hannibal's mouth is smiling, he mirrors the expression, and follows him inside.
Hannibal had bound a filling of liver mousse (made from the sweet and healthy liver of the girl who had served to unite him with Will Graham-it would only be apropos of their first meal) into a pheasant basted with thyme and amontillado beurre blanc. By the time he draws it out of the oven, the bird's flesh is crisp and the filling sizzles within its hollowed carcass.
Will has sat and at the breakfast table and sipped strong coffee, watching Hannibal work with the sort of reverence that suggests near-complete ignorance of culinary practice. Teasing flakes of snow have begun to spin outside the window. Hannibal has only to caress the twine that holds the fragrant foie gras within the bird with the edge of a Wüsthof filleting knife, and its bounty spills forth. A cornucopia brought from the frozen edge of winter.
Watching Will Graham close his eyes as the first tendrils of the rich scent reach his nose satisfies Hannibal so fully that he could push the meal aside and be content. Instead, he portions out two slices of plump breast onto a bed of wilted arugula, and spoons the steaming pâté beside it. He offers Will a glass of dry sherry, which he accepts.
"I think you missed your calling, Dr. Lecter," says Will, after the first bite.
"One can have many, I think. Still, thank you. I enjoy cooking for myself, but the greatest pleasure is cooking for others."
"Did you ever cook for Bedelia?"
"No, I don't believe I did. We had, as I said, grown apart. Professional pressures."
Will nods and takes an inelegant swig of the sherry.
"So, tell me," Hannibal says, "about your own 'calling?'"
"It's hardly that," Will says. "It's more just who I am. It's like, I can look at what someone has done, and all of it, all of the details, become a tunnel right into their mind. I can look out with their eyes, almost feel what they felt."
"That sort of empathy is very strong, and very rare," says Hannibal.
"Yeah," Will says. "That's what I keep hearing. Jack Crawford-he's the head of the BAU, where I work, he brought me in on the Ripper case."
"The Chesapeake Ripper, I assume."
Will nods. "Not that Jack doesn't find other uses for me. The BAU has no shortage of cases."
"It sounds as though these additional cases are a burden."
"They're a distraction. I want to save lives, god knows I do. But the Ripper's list of victims already outstrips the body count in most of our other cases combined. And there could be more, more that were just never found. The Ripper, he's not like the others. He's not like anyone."
"You speak as if you know him," Hannibal says.
"In a way, I do," says Will. "There are certain things that I see, through his eyes, pieces of his design. And then other parts are blocked, like looking at an incomplete puzzle."
"His design?"
Will pauses, his fork mid-way to his mouth. He looks down at the plate. "It's just, well, a word I use. A murder is never one act. It's made up of everything that comes before and after. The design is just all of it, sort of compressed."
"You are able to see it all at once," Hannibal says.
"Except with the Ripper. He's so good. Not good, clever. He knows how to hide, but more than that, he knows how to hide his methods."
"And what would you do if you caught him?"
Will lays the fork on the plate, tines down, bodily need forgotten in the urgency of experience. "I want to look at his face, his hands, study them, see what makes him what he is. Watch what he does to pass himself off as human."
"You don't believe he's human?" Hannibal asks.
"I don't believe he thinks of himself as human."
"And aren't you afraid if you look too hard you'll begin to lose your humanity as well?" Hannibal asks. "In your unique position that is a risk, yes?"
Will Graham smiles again, down at his plate. "I don't think so. I know who I am."
"How did the discovery of the Ripper's latest victim affect you?"
"Marisa Schuur," Will says, and Hannibal finally knows the young woman's name. "I was sad. And then angry. But there was something else. You'll probably think I'm crazy if I tell you."
"I think you are many things, Will, but crazy is not one of them."
Will startles at the sound of his own name pronounced. "Is that a professional opinion?"
"It could be, if you like," Hannibal says. "I doubt my assessment would change much were I listening as a psychiatrist rather than just a friend."
The word "friend" causes Will to flinch again, and he meets Hannibal's gaze for a brief time. His eyes are blue. For a moment, Hannibal thinks he has overstepped his bounds. But then, Will says, "Good to know," and picks the fork up once again, spearing a shred of tender pheasant and dragging it through the ridges of cooling foie gras on his plate.
They eat a while in silence. When Will finally speaks, he says, "When they found Marisa Schuur's body, what I felt more than anything else was relief."
"How so?"
"It felt like I had a line in to the Ripper again," Will says. "He stopped for a while. It's not unusual; most serial killers have hiatus periods. But when this one disappears, the trail dries up. And I don't know what to do with myself. The Chesapeake Ripper has been the only constant in my life for more than two years. I sort of...went mad without that contact. I started having nightmares. That's why I was seeing Bedelia."
"So Bedelia was not only a consultant to your department," Hannibal says.
"Oh, she was," says Will, the bitterness in his voice undisguised now. "She briefed Jack Crawford on the state of my mental well-being."
"Regardless, it was helpful to speak with her, I hope?"
Will sniffs, tosses down the remainder of the sherry in his glass. "Was being the operative word. I have somewhat of a problem with keeping up relationships, Dr. Lecter, professional or otherwise. Has something to do with making people uncomfortable."
"You don't make me uncomfortable. And you may call me 'Hannibal,' if you like." He upends the bottle of sherry over the mouth of Will's glass, allowing the last tawny trickles to wend down the bulb, to merge in irreproducible patterns until they disappear. "Now, since you seem to have such difficulty maintaining relationships, can you at least assure me that my association with you won't also be fatal?"
Will's face freezes, jaw clenched, until he is able to discern-by piecing together Hannibal's facial expression in a series of near-panicked glances-that it is a joke. Then he laughs, but from that split second of confusion Hannibal learns how difficult it is sometimes for Will to trace the vicissitudes of human emotions as they unfold. Will Graham lives as he works: using observation and mimicry to assemble a simulacrum of understanding. He sees the design, as he says, in tableau-oblate and concurrent. Only upon study does nuance emerge, but the unrelenting pace of social interaction does not often allow for reflection of that kind. Hannibal watches as the tension in Will's rigid shoulders is picked out of its knots and falls away, the slow unfurling of a fiddlehead, and understands in an instant the battle it can be for Will simply to appear normal.
It is a struggle not entirely unfamiliar to Hannibal himself.
Later, the dinner dishes still on the table, as Hannibal drives Will back to his car, Will thanks him.
"I hope you don't think I took unfair advantage of you," Will says.
"Not at all," says Hannibal. "Why would you think so?"
Will shrugs. "Because I unloaded on you like it was a therapy session. You've got your own coping to do."
"Bedelia's death left gaps that need to be filled somehow," Hannibal says. "And I am a psychiatrist. I can no more stop doing what I do than you can."
"I can't stop taking things apart. That's true. Sometimes it's nice to talk with somebody who kind of does the same thing."
"Agreed," Hannibal says. "If you'll forgive me for saying so, I feel like I have known you for much longer than I have."
"Good," says Will. "Then I'm not the only one."
Hannibal pulls out a business card, removes a Montblanc ballpoint from his coat pocket and scrawls his cell phone number on the back. "Call me if you ever need to 'unload' again."
This time, Will's laugh is immediate.
The call comes no sooner than Hannibal might have expected, and no later than he would have desired. The timing pleases him nearly as much as the contact, in that both were anticipated. Drawing on prevailing social cues, Will would have put off calling so quickly after their meeting that it seemed hurried or forced, tucking aside any emergent psychological distress spurred either by his case load or by Bedelia's death. Then he would have waited longer still-a demonstration both of quiet pride and of self-sufficiency integral to his meticulous construction of generalized masculine identity.
Hannibal cultivates little regard for the persistence of societal expectation outside of that which allows him to work uninterrupted. In fact, the subversion of it as a solitary pursuit he finds gratifying in the extreme. Whereas he manifests terror and depredation, Will internalizes it, but the act of it for each man sets him to rights, maintains his course. Will is not who he chooses to be without Hannibal, the perfect foil. Which makes the choice entirely Hannibal's, as it should be.
This time, he offers to make the long drive to Will's home in Wolf Trap, Virginia. He also spares them both the indignity of a poor meal by offering to bring dinner in appreciation of Will's hospitality.
The long driveway is rutted and unkempt, the house's exterior weathered. Smoke from a fireplace or stove reaches upward, pale against the low sky, bringing with it the scent of wet, green wood and, below it, a sour animal reek. At the sound of the engine, the front door opens, spilling light, and Will, and a minor flood of smaller, wriggling forms that tumble across the porch and down the stairs.
To Will's credit, Hannibal thinks, at least the dogs don't bark. Swishing tails and prodding noses tap at the protective layer of Hannibal's overcoat, leaving fur and small wet streaks but venturing no further. In a way, it makes sense for this to be Will's home, though Hannibal doubts Will himself sees the particular design he has constructed for himself in all its facets.
"Jake! Winston! Shaye!," Will shouts. "Leave him alone. Come!"
The dogs wheel and follow their master's voice, a torrent of ticking and scrabbling claws on the battered boards of the porch as they dance.
Hannibal removes the willow basket from the passenger seat and shuts the door.
"They probably smell the food," Will says. "Come on in. I promise there's a clean place to sit."
The animals converge, all rippling backs and breath into the freezing air, first around Will then around Hannibal once again. He extends a gloved hand, allows a large, golden-red dog to sniff the fingertips.
Hannibal places the delicate pastry shells on a sheet of aluminum foil in Will's oven, coaxes it to a low heat. It is clean, but by virtue of disuse rather than fastidiousness. He regrets, as he reheats the thick filling for the vol au vents, that he took no more of Marisa Schuur, but it would have disrupted the aesthetic unforgivably. Asymmetry is repugnant to Hannibal, which is why he continues to nurture the connection with Will Graham, out of his element and amid a crowd of dogs fouler than beggars. They lift their muzzles and strain with wet eyes as Hannibal slowly stirs in the liver gravy. At least he can give that, he thinks, and smiles into fragrant steam.
Darkness is dropping through the clouds as Hannibal and Will walk, after their meal. Oncoming night seeps into a daylight that had never quite appeared. But clouds were comfort in this season; there was no pity to be had from either cold or brightness on clear winter days.
The lights in Will's little house slide around tree shadows in the intervening distance, and Will keeps looking backward at them, as if to assure himself of their continued presence.
"I used to talk to Bedelia about my dreams," he says.
"Do they bother you?" Hannibal asks. "Your dreams?"
"Not anymore," Will says. "Not really."
Hannibal gives his undivided attention as Will relays the dreams about the stag and the tree. It is easier, somehow, to hear it all as if for the first time, with the entire world hushed but for their footfalls, silence and light orbiting Will Graham as inexorably as the bodies of his dogs.
"Do you hunt?" Hannibal asks.
"Like, deer hunting? No. I fish sometimes in spring, before it gets too hot. Do you?"
"Do I fish?"
"Do you hunt? You cooked a pheasant."
Hannibal laughs. "I merely employ a resourceful butcher." He pauses. "Do you think the stag in your dreams represents a hunt of some sort? Your search for the Chesapeake Ripper?"
"I thought it might for a while," Will says.
"What changed your mind?"
"The change in the dream when the Ripper stopped killing. I don't feel like I'm the one who's being hunted; somehow that's too hokey." Will shakes his head, baring his teeth in the rictus that twists his features when he concentrates. Or rather, when he turns his perception to the crenellated and confounding landscape of the internal. "It's more like, I guess, it's something in me, something unbearably ugly that needs an outlet."
"The Ripper as catharsis," Hannibal says. "Intriguing."
"Yeah, I don't know," says Will, bending to pick up a good-sized stick in his path and tossing it into the dark, away from the house. Two dogs race along its path and out of sight. That they cleave to inevitability with such joy is something for which Hannibal can muster a bit of respect.
A chorus of barking spills out of the darkness a few moments later. Will whistles, fingers between his lips.
The dogs come bounding back. One carries something in its mouth, and it is not the thrown stick but a mangled rabbit. Its white fur is matted with blood and the head hangs at an impossible angle. Bright viscera trail from its opened belly. One hind paw dangles from a sinew, dancing and waving with the agitated motion of the dog's head.
"Drop it," Will commands. The big dog releases his prize, but with reluctance. The little carcass tumbles to the earth at Will's feet. Will's dogs did not kill the rabbit; likely they frightened off whatever other predator had staked its claim first.
"Ugh," Will says. "Sorry."
"No need." Hannibal reaches down, hand still gloved, and scratches behind the big dog's ears. "You should never apologize for something that it is only doing what is in its nature to do."
The incident stays with Hannibal; he recalls it with easy pleasure. The earnest way in which Will Graham sought to excuse the animal's behavior, as though there were anything at all to excuse. His disgust at the eviscerated corpse of a rabbit, when he plies his trade in examining the ruined corpses of men. For all his self-imposed solitude in the famously harsh wilderness, Hannibal understands now that one man killing another, especially with intent-design-falls entirely outside of Will's personal taxonomy. Despite, even in defiance of, its frequency, murder to him is an interruption of natural order, rather than an extension. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism, a buffer against the wearing down of indignation that would preclude his performing at his job. It is a state of mind that has, in all honesty, never occurred to Hannibal, and he plans to devote significant time to its study at some point.
Nevertheless, when he sees the blonde boy-the pale skin of his arms darkened by tattoos-guide his skateboard through a flailing group of foreign tourists at the Inner Harbor, he is unable to resist.
Later that night, Hannibal carefully slices each tattoo from the boy's body, one by one, a process that takes hours and leaves him perspiring. The boy has either slipped into shock or has aspirated a portion of the handkerchief used to gag him before Hannibal begins to gouge out tender portions of meat from forearms and calves, wrapping and sealing them neatly.
Near the end of it, Hannibal slides a scalpel into the tough discs of cartilage between the second and third cervical vertebrae and severs the spinal cord. There is no breath left to rattle when he removes the makeshift gag. As much as he would like to, Hannibal doesn't cut into either of the boy's feet. Though later, when he has driven the cooling body to a snow-dusted field in lower Carroll County, Maryland, he will open the belly and pull out the loop of the transverse colon to leave on the ground.
A snare.
In spite of his heaving breath and shaking voice, the first thing out of Will's mouth when he calls Hannibal a few nights later is an apology.
"What's happened, Will?"
"The Ripper. Another body," he gasps, as if it is an explanation.
It is incumbent upon Hannibal to remain calm, provide a voice of reason to thread through the punctured plane of his agitated state. "And you know it's him?"
"It has to be."
"Why?"
"It just is. Listen, my dream-"
"I had thought the Ripper quieted your dreams," Hannibal says.
"He does. He used to. I don't know what happened," Will says, the panic tenacious in his voice. "The stag, I dreamed it was behind me again. I could hear it, even smell it. It smelled like death. But it touched me this time. Or something did. But it wasn't an animal. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I woke up in a lake of sweat."
"Stay there, Will. Stay where you are. I'll come and get you."
"The dogs-"
"They'll be taken care of," Hannibal says. "You're in no fit state to be by yourself."
Will opens the door when he arrives, and the scent hits Hannibal with such force he must fight not to stagger back. It is a burning smell, and sweet like overripe fruit already tipping into swift decline. Something autoimmune, probably encephalitis, with attendant fever. Asleep, in a state of opened consciousness, Will had smelled his own brain cooking.
"Hannibal," Will says.
Hannibal walks through the house, to the bedroom, throws shirts and jeans over his arm and tucks a pair of socks into his pocket. Will is still sitting by the door, head in his hands, in a soaked t-shirt and boxer briefs.
"I need you to get dressed, Will," says Hannibal. "Can you do that for me?"
Will nods. His face is ashen.
He sleeps on the drive back to Baltimore, but it is fitful, his cheek pressed to the cold window and fists clenched, eyes roaming underneath their lids. Surveying the distorted landscape his mind is presenting.
Hannibal must support him bodily on their way into the house. Will voices no objections as Hannibal peels off the layers of clothing-corduroys, henley shirt, underclothes still soaked and redolent with fear-sweat. Once Will is ensconced in the guest bed, the eiderdown pad removed for the sake of keeping him cool, Hannibal drapes a sheet over his recumbent form. Will recoils from the touch of the fabric as if burned.
"Sleep, Will," says Hannibal.
"I don't want to. Please."
"You're safe now," Hannibal says.
"Stay," Will says, his eyes glassy.
"You need your rest."
Will surges forward, the sheet snapping with the force of it. He grips Hannibal's wrist with one hand, and the other he places, fumbling, at Hannibal's groin, pushing into the fabric of his coat.
Hannibal pries each hand away in turn, pushing Will back to the bed and arranging his hands, one atop the other, on his fluttering chest. He brushes a lank curl from Will's forehead and places his own cool palm over the fevered skin.
"You must sleep. You'll see me when you wake up. There is nothing to worry about. Not here."
Will relents with a stricken expression, and squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his head back into the pillow.
He clutches at the sheet that lays across his midsection, fingers digging in, a sore test of the fine fabric.
He feeds ragged exhalations to the air above the bed, a purge of nightmares.
But he does not open his eyes again.
Hannibal stands at the door until he hears the harsh breaths even and draw out, stumbling at last into the rhythm of sleep. He stands so long and so still at the threshold that his muscles begin to resist the strain. Only when he shifts to quiet their complaint does he realize he is so hard that he aches. Just as he did beside the body of Marisa Schuur, he allows the sensation to dwell for a moment. Then he removes his coat and takes a book from the library. Choosing the armchair closest to the door, Hannibal reads, and listens.