Author's note:
I believe this is the first time readers of my fics have attempted to organize into a club to request a horrible fate for one of my characters. Will I be receiving a written proposal from its president shortly? Are there going to be polls on the lecterphiles list over it? But I'm afraid I haven't given you enough reasons to hate Agent DeGould as of yet. Further angst will be forthcoming. But for now, some action and humor in lieu of the angst.
A few days passed. Dr. Hannibal Lecter remained holed up in his suite at the five-star hotel he was staying at. Erin Lander remained holed up in her favored-prisoner cell at Quantico. Clarice Starling was just about as holed up in the basement floors of Behavioral Sciences. Meetings with the force, meetings with her superiors, phone calls, conference calls. It was enough to make a grown woman cry, even one who had worked jump-out squad duty.
There had been no repeats of the arguments between DeGould and Starling. Clarice found herself torn. All of her instincts said that DeGould was up to no good. But she couldn't prove anything, and if DeGould was going to behave, then fine. She kept the younger agent close, letting her have some management of the team. That didn't bother Clarice. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. With DeGould running some management stuff, Clarice could better keep an eye on her.
Perhaps four days later, Agent DeGould tactfully reminded Starling that Erin Lander's follow-up appointment with her ob-gyn was that day. Clarice took a look at her schedule and found herself booked solid. She didn't trust DeGould, but the younger agent was a promising sleuth, and she didn't want to waste one of her good sleuths with a waste-of-time detail like this. DeGould had found him once. She might do it again. Plus, truth be told, DeGould's prior campaign for access to Dr. Lander had Clarice worried. The thought of DeGould alone in a car with her prisoner for a while made Clarice uneasy.
"You could give it to Petrie," DeGould suggested. "It's not like he does much other than bounce off the walls and annoy everyone."
"Yeah," Clarice hedged, "but I'm not sure…he can set people on edge, and I don't want to get her on edge…last thing I need is her attorney claiming harassment or something."
Rebecca DeGould chuckled. For a moment she wondered if Clarice had any suspicion at all that she was quietly talking to Clarice's superiors, as well as Dr. Lander, behind her back. But no, everything seemed to be fine.
"You just need to spell it out for him, Agent Starling," DeGould said. "He's an alright guy, but he needs to be told."
"Told what?" Clarice asked, running a hand through her hair and feeling frazzled.
"Told what he can do, and what he can't," DeGould said delicately. "You know, if he can frisk her, if he can cuff her. Whatever you feel to be appropriate. But you have to spell it out for Petrie."
Clarice nodded. Rebecca DeGould left to go send Petrie into Starling's office. She rather hoped he would do something dumb. He probably would. That might be the next screwup needed to get Clarice Starling busted back down. It would work out better than she ever could have hoped.
William Petrie skidded into Clarice's office perhaps forty-five seconds later.
"You wanted me?" he asked excitedly. For a moment Clarice expected him to salute. She sighed and put her hand on the desk calmly. Don't yell at him. He's just excited.
"Yes, Agent Petrie," Clarice said calmly. "Dr. Lander is going back to the doctor's today. I want you to take her."
"Okay," Petrie said. He grinned and bounced a few times on his heels. "You can count on me, chief," he said eagerly.
Did he just call me 'Chief'? Clarice Starling thought incredulously. She sighed.
"Petrie," she said as patiently, "now listen up here. I don't want you to…aggravate Dr. Lander any more than she needs to be."
"I won't," Petrie promised, sounding bizarrely like a little kid promising not to break Mommy's good vase.
"Good. Hold off on the Dragnet stuff, Petrie. We want this witness cooperative. Don't frisk her, don't cuff her unless she gets unruly." Don't act like a spaz who's been given some authority, was what she ached to say. Images of Petrie demanding to be there for Dr. Lander's pelvic exam, and the subsequent storm that would bring from Dr. Lander's attorney, played through her mind. "And for Christ's sake, don't make yourself an issue. When they have her at the doctor, you wait outside the room till they're done. Don't try and insist on staying in there with her. There's…things they need to do for her. That she won't want you watching for."
Petrie looked vaguely hurt, as if she had accused him of planning all of that. "I won't," he said. "I'll be nice."
"Good," Clarice said. "Go to the motor pool and grab a car. I'll bring you up once you do."
Petrie rushed out of Starling's office at top speed. Clarice shook her head as she watched him go. Jesus, that man must run at hyperspeed round the clock. Perhaps ten minutes later, he skidded back in.
"I got the keys," he said importantly, as if he had needed to fight off a few wild alligators in order to get them.
"Okay then," Clarice said. She rose and took him upstairs. The guard at Erin's door gave her an odd look.
"Doctor's appointment," Clarice sighed. The guard nodded silently and opened the door.
Erin Lander was sitting at her table reading a book when they entered. She was wearing the suit she had worn when she was captured. Clarice noticed that the suit appeared to fit a little tight, and sighed. Hopefully the clothes DeGould had gotten her would fit better. She'd already gotten yelled at for spending a few hundred dollars on clothes for her prisoner. The upper echelons had no problem with her spending thousands of dollars to capture Dr. Lecter, but apparently clothing a woman who might be able to point them to him was out of the question. What was she supposed to do once Erin got too big to wear the clothes she had? Make her run around naked?
"You ready, Dr. Lander?" Clarice said in a friendly tone.
"Yes," Erin said, eying Petrie curiously.
"Agent Petrie will actually be taking you to your appointment today," Clarice explained.
A look of distaste came over Erin's face. "I don't want a man in there with me when they examine me," she protested.
Clarice held up her hands. "He won't be. He'll be outside the door, of course, but you'll have your privacy."
That seemed to pacify Erin, and she went along readily enough with them. Petrie had pulled the car up into the turnaround, and Erin went into the back seat willingly enough. Clarice watched them go, and swallowed. It would be OK. Not even Petrie could screw this up.
In the car, Erin Lander was quiet on the ride to her doctor's office. Petrie was excited. They'd trusted him with guarding the prisoner! Only he stood between Erin Lander and freedom. But he would be nice. Agent Starling was depending on him to see that this went off smoothly. Agent Petrie determined that it would.
So he sat next to her in the waiting room and crossed his arms importantly. Once she was called back in and installed in an exam room, William Petrie stood with his back against the wall and drew himself up to attention. A nurse came in to take care of some of the preliminaries – a history, a blood sample. Petrie nodded knowingly at her when she came in and when she came out.
Hannibal Lecter had explained to his wife how he had escaped from Memphis all those years ago. For all the man's fearsome intellect, great strength, and willingness to kill to be free, he had never once managed to escape from the asylum, or even come close. The reason was simple, he had told her. The asylum was specifically built to keep people inside it who did not want to be there. The courthouse he had escaped from was not.
Neither was a doctor's office.
Once the nurse had left, Erin Lander got to work. She removed her suit jacket and her white silk blouse and hung it over the back of the exam chair. It took her a moment to step out of the skirt. Underneath that, she wore the pink nurse's scrubs that Starling had brought her to wear when she had first arrived. The legs of the scrub pants were rolled up and taped, so that they did not show under her skirt.
Around her abdomen, she had wrapped the white sheet and pillowcase from her bed. She unwrapped them now. The sneakers that Clarice had supplied her with were hidden against her sides. The suit and her good shoes went into the pillowcase. She donned the sneakers hurriedly and glanced over at the window.
The window in the exam room opened with a crank. It took only a moment to get the window as far open as it would go. It would be tight, and a larger person wouldn't have been able to fit through. But Erin could. The exam room she was in was on the second floor of the building. The medical office building was across the street from the hospital proper. Erin Lander knew what to do now.
She tied the corner of the bedsheet to the window crank and worked her way through the narrow opening. In order to free her hands to hold onto the sheet, she held the pillowcase in her teeth. She would need it. Tasting cotton in her mouth, her fingers cramping, her body bumping against the rough brick of the outside wall, Erin Lander lowered herself down the side of the building to freedom. Finally, she reached the end of the bedsheet and dropped the last six inches to the ground. The shock of contact with the ground raced up her calves. She let out a grunt and planted her hands against the wall to steady herself. Everything seemed okay. She placed her hands on her stomach and rubbed a bit to soothe her infant.
"Mommy's sorry, honey," she whispered, and then set off towards the hospital. A few people driving by gawped and stared at the bedsheet flapping from the window like a bizarre white pennant. Good, Erin Lander thought. Only those who had seen her shinny down it would connect it to her; everyone else would stare at the sheet and ignore the woman who had climbed down it. She crossed the street and headed up to the hospital's ER.
It was just like the hospitals she practiced in. Noisy and busy. So long as she looked like she knew what she was doing she would have no problems. Carefully, Dr. Erin Lander studied the white board on which patients were listed. She memorized a few names and took a moment to note who was going into what treatment room. Dr. Silverman, to see that patient…Dr. Holburg to see that one…okay.
Dr. Lander heard the familiar woop-woop of an ambulance siren and remembered her residency. She turned around and waited. Sure enough,an ambulance crew came running in with a gurney. MVA, multiple contusions to the chest. She bet he'd be in surgery before long. Internal bleed city.
Dr. Erin Lander walked down to the drug lockup and glanced in through the wire mesh at the pharmacist. He was rather pudgy and looked at her puzzledly.
"Help you?" he asked.
"Yep," she said. "I need 20 cc's Haldol. Got an unruly patient."
The pharmacist eyed her. "I haven't seen you before," he said.
Erin smiled patiently. "I'm new here," she explained. "First day."
"Welcome aboard," the pharmacist said. "Who ordered the Haldol?"
It took Erin rather more acting ability than she thought to not glare at him and say I did. She'd had to put the fear of God into a few pharmacists during her residency. Instead, she smiled prettily again and said, "Dr. Holburg."
"Okey dokey," the pharmacist said, and gave her the vial. "Bring it back here when you're done."
Erin promised dutifully to do so and headed off. She slipped into a treatment room. A young teenager lay on the bed and looked nervous. He held a large pressure bandage to his arm. It was pretty bloody, she noted. Might need stitches.
"Hi," she said and smiled automatically. Boy, good thing she'd never become a nurse. As a doctor she had the right to scowl whenever she damn well pleased. "The doctor will be with you in just a minute. Let me see that."
Just for appearances' sake, she had a look at the wound. Pretty ugly, a long slash down his arm. Erin wondered if it was a suicide bid. Probably just clumsiness; it looked superficial. After changing the kid's dressing to a new one he could get all bloody, she swiped two disposable syringes from the drawer and left back into the maelstrom of the ER.
She glanced over at the desk and saw a doctor's lab coat lying on a chair, complete with ID clipped to the pocket. For a moment she wondered about how to get it. Should she just walk up brazenly and get it, or try and sneak up on it? It would be better if she grabbed it as if she had every right to it. She could always claim that the doctor who owned it had asked her to grab it for him. As it turned out, the receptionist at the chair next to it didn't even notice. Dr. Lander took the coat and strolled further into the hospital.
Down the hall she saw what she was looking for. A small room labeled STOREROOM on the sign next to the door. Dr. Lander entered it and grabbed a set of blue surgical scrubs and a pair of latex gloves. Once she had swapped out her pink scrubs for the blue ones, she found herself feeling much better. A doctor again. The pink scrubs went into the hamper nearby. The lab coat was big on her, and she had to turn up the sleeves. She inverted the ID card so that it wouldn't be obvious. She'd have to try and pick up a pager from somewhere, but this would do for now. She stripped the syringes out of their plastic covers and drew them up, putting them in the pocket of her lab coat. The vial of Haldol went into the other pocket.
Erin Lander differed from her husband in one large respect. Hannibal Lecter was capable of great depravity and violence, when it amused him to do so. Erin Lander had seen every day the results of violence, and she abhorred it. But being non-violent didn't mean she had to go completely unarmed.
…
William Petrie stood self-importantly and proud at the door to the exam room Erin Lander was in. He watched as the doctor came closer.
"Go on in, doctor," he said, very pleased with himself. The doctor opened the door and walked in. Petrie could hear him through the door.
"OK, now…Dr. Lander, I bel—what the hell?"
The doctor dodged back out and looked at Petrie in puzzlement.
"You've got the wrong room there, fella," he told Petrie.
"No, I don't," Petrie said. "She went in there. I saw her myself."
"No one's in there," the doctor informed him. Agent William Petrie felt his stomach do a long flip-flop. Oh no. Not this. Not after Agent Starling had trusted the safe transportation of the prisoner to him. No. Please?
He stepped around the door, and took in the open window allowing the summer breeze into the room. He saw the bedsheet tied carefully to the window crank. His mouth felt dry. Oh God. Agent Starling was going to kill him.
Then he saw the hospital across the street, and he knew where she would go.
"Excuse me," Petrie said in as official a tone as he could manage. The doctor looked at him bizarrely. It sounded like a small boy trying to force his voice artificially deep so that he sounded like an adult. "This is official FBI business. This room is now sealed. Excuse me, please, while I re-apprehend the criminal."
Then he turned and ran at top speed, down the hall, out the door, and across the street. The doctor watched him go, slightly bemused.
"Wow," the doctor said. "That guy needs some Ritalin."
But William Petrie soldiered bravely on to protect the public and capture the escaping criminal. A car honked at him and almost hit him, but this was official FBI business! A mere driver must yield. He ran into the hospital and headed for the ER.
He'd thought it would be easy to pick out Dr. Lander in the ER. It wasn't. The ER was crowded and people walked all over the place. It blocked his view.
"FBI! Move it," he said, and tried to push his way through the crowd. People simply looked at him. He ran up to the desk and flashed his FBI credentials at the receptionist.
"Agent Petrie, FBI," he said. "There is an escaped criminal here in this hospital."
The receptionist looked at him blankly. "OK, Officer…what did you want me to do?"
"Lock off all the windows and doors," Petrie ordered.
The receptionist sighed. "You must be joking," she replied. "This is an ER, we can't lock all the doors. We need to let patients in and out."
For a moment William Petrie thought of calling the police and getting reinforcements. But no, then they would know he had messed up. He didn't want them to know. Better that he, personally, find the doctor and bring her to justice.
He ran down the hall again, and there he saw her in the elevator. She saw him too. Petrie fumbled for his gun before realizing it was too late. The doors were closing.
He turned around and ran up the stairs nearby, hoping he would catch her before it was too late. He made it around the landing and onto the stairs. Catch the bad guy! The bad guys didn't win. He knew this to be true. But the elevator door wasn't opening. Wrong floor. Rats.
So Petrie soldiered bravely on. Up to the surgical floor, where he caught sight of a short doctor disappearing down a quiet hallway. There she was! He ran down the hall, wondering if he should reach for his weapon. You weren't supposed to shoot in a hospital. This William Petrie thought to be true.
He turned where the hallway did. There was no one in the hall. He frowned. Where had she gone? Was it her at all? He had to recapture her. He knew what would happen if she got away.
Then suddenly, there was a scrape of a sneaker sole behind him, and a firm grip on the back of his head, and a sting at his neck. William Petrie tried to turn. He fumbled for his pistol, only to feel hands not as fumbling as his own pluck it from his holster. There, behind him, was Dr. Erin Lander, fitting in perfectly well in her stolen lab coat and scrubs. Had Clarice Starling gone with him, she might have been able to tell him that Dr. Lander would most likely head to Surgery. After all, she could pretend to be an ER nurse, but eventually she would make a mistake. She was a surgeon.
William Petrie collapsed faceup on the floor. Erin Lander grinned down at him. That trick had once worked on Clarice Starling, and from what Erin could see she was worth a barrel of Petries. Plus, she had a few more syringes of Haldol. Petrie wouldn't die, he wouldn't suffer. Nothing violent. But he would sleep long enough for her to get away. Plus, getting him neatly answered the question of how she was going to get out of here.
Erin Lander borrowed a gurney from where it had been nonchalantly parked against the wall and put the unconscious man on it. She wheeled him down to an empty room, where she removed his clothing and dressed him in a patient gown. She took his cuffs and locked one wrist to the gurney. She took the gun even though she didn't want it. Guns were bad. Well, she could dump it somewhere else.
She felt some guilt over going through his wallet. Borrowing scrubs she could rationalize; like most doctors, Erin Lander was an unrepentant scrub thief. Even borrowing some drugs she could deal with. She could pay for them later. And she needed them. But rifling William Petrie's wallet made her feel cheap and dirty, a nasty little thief.
That didn't mean it didn't have to be done. She didn't want him to have any ID when he woke up, and she would need the cash in his wallet more than he would. Sixty dollars cash and his debit card. She didn't want the debit card. She'd pay him back once this was over, though.
The big thing she wanted was right there. The car keys. Erin didn't know for sure, but they could probably track the car through the FBI somehow. That was OK. She knew better than to use the car for the long term anyway. Just enough to get her away from here.
Erin Lander put Petrie's clothing into a bag labeled PATIENT BELONGINGS. The gun was heavy and strained at the plastic. She didn't like guns and wanted to get rid of it, but she didn't want him to have it. Well, she'd leave it in the trunk.
She left Petrie in the empty room. So far, things had worked out well. She found herself feeling excited, almost like a kid again. She'd done it. Would he be proud of her? She thought so. Plus, she was free now. Starling would not get her again.
Thinking about that made her feel all the shock and betrayal of a few nights before, when DeGould had visited her cell and told her Starling planned to stab her in the back. At the time, it had seemed hard to believe. And truth be told, she couldn't believe DeGould's offer of assistance. Starling had offered her the same thing. No, it had to come to this. And now she would be free, free to seek him out again. Her life, back the way she wanted it. A dizzying and powerful thought. Him. She would get to see him again.
Erin Lander stopped in the bathroom and changed back into her suit. She headed out of the hospital and back across the street. The big Crown Victoria waited in the parking lot of the medical office building. It was difficult to get the big bench seat adjusted and she had to stretch out her feet to reach the pedals. She started the car and drove off.
An electronic tone warbled from one of the patient-belonging bags on the passenger seat beside her. Erin reached into it and pulled out Agent Petrie's cell phone. It trilled persistently in her hand.
On the LCD display read STARLING CLARICE M. She glanced around and saw the highway was not far off. She knew where she wanted to go. Why not?
She pressed TALK and held the phone to her ear.
"Hello?" she asked.
"Dr. Lander?" Clarice seemed puzzled. "What are you doing with Agent Petrie's phone?"
"He left it with me," Erin explained. "He had to step out for a bit. Little boy's room." She grinned at her own deception.
Clarice seemed mollified by that. "Well, that's odd, but I'll take that up with him. Wanted to make sure everything was going okay. Petrie means well, but he can kind of be a handful."
She sounded friendly. She must be a very good liar, Erin thought. One could almost believe she was concerned about Erin. But now she knew it was all a lie, and that Clarice Starling intended to throw her back in jail once she was of no more use to her.
"He's been all right," Erin said. "Not a problem at all."
For a moment she wondered what would happen to Starling when all this came out. Then she thought of Clarice laughing at her and leaving her in prison, laughing as Erin lost her baby, her husband, and her very life. Then it seemed that just about anything Clarice might suffer as a result of this might pale by comparison.
"I have to go," Erin said. "Doctor just came in." She held the phone away from her face and said, "I'll just be a minute," to the inside of the car.
"Okay then. See you back at the base," Clarice answered, sounding a bit confused.
"Sure," Erin Lander said, smiling. Oh boy, she was going to be mad. Oh well, that's what was due a liar, wasn't it?
The big Crown Victoria headed smoothly onto the Beltway. It enraged the cars behind it because it would not go past sixty. Moreover, the big antenna waving off the back made it obvious that this was a police vehicle. So the citizens behind it, now forced to be law-abiding, simply growled and cursed at it from the safety of their windshields. Then it took the airport exit, smoothly pulling onto the off-ramp, and stopped in long-term parking. The window rolled down and a small, smooth hand emerged to take a ticket. Then it headed into long-term parking and disappeared.