Hey again everyone! I am so happy to see all the story alerts and reviews I've been getting. I tend to get bored with things easily but this story has been eating at me for the past week and I know I just have to update it. Thank you to everyone for your reviews and again a special thanks to Adelaide for pointing out some glaring typos. They will be fixed soon...ish. I'll stop talking now and get on with the story.
I do not own any of the characters from Hannibal or Silence of the Lambs.
Clarice set up home base in a small village outside of Rome. She took an already finished house that the owner was letting now that his mother had passed on and left him with all of her worldly possessions including the property but had also stipulated he could not sell it. The house was nothing much as far as most American's standards would go but she loved it just the same. It was a small squat two-story building but the attic was the true treasure. The window at its far end looked out upon the sprawl of the big city but it was not the best feature of the room. The door, an amazing contraption, once locked could not be opened from the outside, had a two way mirror so that the viewer on the inside could see who was coming up the stairs while they were still unaware of the audience they had. It was the perfect set up. She was close enough to the ancient city that she could be there within the space of an hour and still far enough away and out of sight that the bureau and anyone else that came looking for her would have a very difficult time finding her. She had no expectations that, should the good doctor put his mind to it, he wouldn't be able to find it but then there really was nowhere that would fit THAT description unless she went to live in a bog somewhere in Eurasia and even then she had doubts about her evasiveness.
And so she was not terribly surprised when a bare foot child in nothing but a pair of torn blue jeans and a red bandana over his wildly bouncing locks, came running up to her just as she was leaving for the morning a week after her arrival. The letter was unmistakable even as it sat in the hands of the tiny street urchin and she knew immediately who the sender was without even looking for the return address that she knew would not be there. The child, a crafty lad for all his lack of years, had tried to ply her with a pitiful story of his starving sister and his family dead but she had told him, as she was already sure of it, that she knew he had been paid well for this task and would not get another cent from her.
It occurred to her to ask the boy who had given him the letter and paid him so well that he had actually delivered it instead of tucking it away and walking off with the money but when she asked the child looked down at his feet with a sly smile crossing his face for a moment and then telling her that it was not polite to look a gift horse in the mouth and any further questions she put to him were met with similar responses.
She made a liar of herself a moment later when, as he was preparing to leave, his head down in a look of dejection, she pushed a few euros into his hand. The child's smile returned like a flash of lightning and then he quickly bowed himself out of the yard saying all the while that he would speak of her greatness and charity to all who would listen. More likely tell them what a sucker I am for a pretty face, she thought but thought better of it and turned around to re-enter the house she had just moments before vacated.
She went straight up to the attic where she had set up her lab equipment, her mind already whirring over possible ways to link this letter to its source. The child would have been of no use, of that she was sure. He knew who had paid him for his services but had probably been offered the chance at more, if he would keep his tongue between his teeth. It was also quite likely that Lecter had used a fake name and how, really, was a child to know that the kindly man who offered him money for such a trivial task, had in reality been a serial killer? He couldn't have and so she had not bothered to detain him further. The fact that the child had come at all, instead of the letter being delivered through the mail, made her think that her quarry was closer that it had at first appeared but she knew the Doctor well enough to know that he easily could have shipped it into the country and to a place that would fulfill his requirements to the T and could even have sent money along specifically for a runner such as the boy to bring it to her. Or, he could have given the letter to the boy days ago with instructions not to deliver it until today and could be well outside the country by now.
She turned on her surface light, pulled on surgical gloves, and sterilized her letter opener before even looking again at the letter but it was never out of her mind for a moment. She worked methodically where she wanted nothing more than to tear the letter open and pour over its contents. She slowly opened the envelope, checking the postmarks to see if there were any clues. The letter seemed to have been routed through a great many countries before its personal delivery but interestingly the address on it was for her house here. How then, had it gotten into the hands of the urchin if not through specific directive from its sender? She smiled, at this as she realized the questions she was asking herself were unhelpful and in the scheme of things, of little importance to her investigation. With that she made the last incision with her opener and pulled the creased paper free of its confinement.
The paper was similar to that of a previous letter she had received although this was not surprising to her as Doctor Lecter was nothing if not meticulous and thoughtful. She carefully unfolded the creases and began to read the first page.
Dear Clarice,
I trust this letter finds you in good health and that you are not terribly annoyed by the intrusion of a letter from such an old friend. I write in the understanding that congratulations are in order. I have heard, through the grapevine that you have been placed back on a very contentious and high profile case and I am left to wonder what you had to do to gain this position. Your soul is still in tact I hope? And your right arm, still firmly in its socket? It leads me further to wonder why you would wish to be placed on such a case at all although I am comforted by the thought that you do this so that you need not be so much the lackey of the system that has done you so little for all of the help you have done them. I am sure you will recall after out last meeting, that I feel your skills and talents are being wasted on your precious Bureau, for it will never return your esteem. No, far better for you to be out of sight and out from underfoot where they might use you worse then they already had. I can see you pouring over reports in your darkened basement as they let you ride a desk until all of your enthusiasm and spunk have been drained from you and you become little more then another one of their drones like the recently deceased Agent Krendler. No, it is for the best that you are out in the world doing what it is you do best: righting the wrongs of the world and passing judgment on all of the lesser mortals you come upon. I can only hope that this does not take up all of your energy and take away your chance to delight in the wonders you find around you. It is in that vein that I have taken the liberty to place a seat on reserve for you at the Theatre Rivaldi for a week hence. You will find the ticket enclosed. This is a black tie affair so dress appropriately for the occasion. You must let me know what you think of the performance as it is among my favorites though it remains to be seen whether or not the new male lead will live up to expectations.
On a more serious note, I am sure you have not yet heard that our dear friend Dr. Cordell is no longer among the living. He met with a rather unfortunate accident and his body was found tied across the bed of his ex-patient, Mason Verger with a very familiar facemask on him and his internal organs strangely missing. I am sure I speak for both of us when I say this must be a hard blow for the Bureau as they were unable to question him in time, about his part in the recent deaths on his employer's estate. We must not mourn for his loss however, for I can only imagine that he has now gotten his just rewards in the afterlife and that is something entirely out of our hands.
I hope this news does not too terribly darken your day and I hope that the thought of seeing a real operetta instead of the classless entertainment found in your dear America has brought a silver lining to the dark cloud I'm sure has been forming over your head as soon as you received this letter.
As always, your friend,
Hannibal Lecter, M.D.
P.S. I f you have not already burned the dress and shoes I left for you after our last encounter, I suggest that you air them out as they would make a fine outfit for such an occasion. Also, please do not be too put out with me, should a package arrive for you soon.
-HL
At the bottom was a small but detailed picture of what looked to be an angel and a gargoyle looking out at her from the one folds of the paper. She stared for a minute or too more at the letter but was pulled away from her reverie by a sharp knock at the front door. Checking to make sure her gun was at the ready in it's hidden holster at the small of her back, she made her way downstairs and opened the door only to find a small brown parcel on her door step and no one in sight. She slowly picked up the parcel, glad that she had forgotten to remove her gloves in her haste to reach the door and returned to her house, relocking the door behind her. Her thoughts returned to the last lines of the letter and it was all she could do not to run up both flights of stairs and tear the package open like a child at Christmas. After thoroughly investigating the package and finding no evidence that could help her in anyway, she began meticulously removing the brown paper and found a white glossy box with a gold engraving on it's cover proclaiming Everett's. Opening this she found three smaller boxes, one larger than the other too.
She opened this first and found a beautiful hand worked shawl made with silver fibers and as thin as spider silk. She knew at once that this would match perfectly with the black dress, hidden in the back of her closet. In the next box she found a pair of emerald earrings, hanging like tear drops from silver hooks. They were beautiful and of course something she could never imagine buying for herself. The final box contained a set of flawless silver hair combs, wrought through with tiny ivy leaves set with flawless emeralds in the center of each. They would set off her red hair nicely and she knew that the sender had thought about this purchase in quite a lot of detail to make sure the effect would be stunning and irresistible to the recipient.
It was with great difficulty that she put her gift away and went back to the letter. She spent some time just studying the intricate loops and swirls that were so different from any other handwriting she had seen in her years of study and yet so patently Lecter. It was only after the third or fourth reading that it struck her that the picture at the bottom seemed vaguely familiar. She could not shake the eerie sensation that she had seen it somewhere and even when she left her workroom to go down to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, it still ate at her.
And that was how the next dawn found her slouched over her desk staring doggedly at her computer screen, her fifth or was it her sixth, cup of coffee growing cold beside her. She knew she had seen the angel and gargoyle somewhere but had little more than that niggling feeling to go on. So it was almost astonishing to her dazed and bleary minded when she finally came upon a picture bearing the caption 'Saint Jerard's Cathedral Gets a Face Lift but Old Favorites Left in Tact'. The angel and its mate stared back at her from atop the ancient church and she remembered where she had seen them at last. She had walked by that exact spot where the photographer must have stood to get his intriguing picture, just days before on her way to the library not a block away. She had passed it many times and thought nothing of it until now. But now it meant something, now she had a clue as to where to begin her search. And that meant the hunt was on.
((Well, here is the next chapter in this saga that seems to be getting more and more indepth when I was actually planning on this being a two part story... well, I like it anways. If you like it or don't please still review. You all know the routine by now, the more reviews I get the faster I'll update. Please keep me wanting to write this because I'm already excited about the next chapter. See you all soon in the next chapter hopefully!))