Chapter Twenty Five – Something good
.
A small deli sits at the corner of Fourteenth and H Street. From the outside, the dusty red brick is slightly drab and down-at-the-heels; a good, honest, east-coast diner, frequented by Federal personnel.
Agent Benedict Vale approaches from the front, ruffling a stray autumnal leaf out of his jacket hood as he pushes through the swing door. The bell on the door-frame jingles and a rush of voices wash over him. Vale scans the room, but hears Clarice Starling before he sees her.
"You have got to be joking – he put it where?"
Vale's eyes snapped over to the booths near the deli. Seated at one of them were two men, both wearing blue uniforms, and a casually attired Clarice Starling. The two men had bottles of Coke on front of them. Starling was cradling an orange juice and half a sandwich.
"No joke, Clarice," the thinner of the uniforms laughed. "Right up."
Vale stepped inside, closed the door.
"There are some things you should not have to do for your country." At the table, Clarice Starling pulled a face and threw back her last mouthful of orange juice.
Sensing a lull in the conversation, Vale lifted his hand and gave her a wave, calling her name as he walked over.
"Hey, Starling,"
Starling and the uniforms looked up as he approached.
"Hey." She smiled.
"You called?"
"Yeah, I need to talk to you about something. I'm sorry to drag you out on your lunch break, but it's important. Just give me a moment and I'll finish up here." She finished the last bite of her sandwich and crumpled up the wrapper in her fist. "Oh-." remembering herself, Starling introduced each of the uniforms in turn. "Agent Vale, meet Jason Roe and Captain Laurence Grayson."
"G'd day Mr Roe," he inclined his head, "Lieutenant."
"Afternoon, sir."
"Af'ernoon."
There was an awkward silence between the four, as the chatter of the deli carried on around them. Vale shifted from one foot to the other, not quite sure why he had been called there.
"You know, Vale, Sergeant Roe used to work as a security guard for Securicon."
"The personal surveillance company?"
"Yup."
Vale stared for a moment, his mind spinning through all the improbable reasons why Starling was drinking with an ex security guard and his partner. Then he hit on one.
"Securicon... that was the company Senator Woodley employed?"
"Mmmhm." Starling smiled again, her expression unreadable, and set down her glass. It made a dull clunk against the Formica tabletop. "Indeed it is. Mr Roe was in town to speak to the FBI on another matter. I requisitioned him to ask him some questions on Securicon." Starling explained. "He has been extremely helpful."
Mendez again. Vale felt like rolling his eyes. Why was Starling so stuck on this case?
"Small world." He smiled tightly.
"It's no problem, miss." The younger guard spoke up, with enthusiasm. "I was in town any ways and its always a pleasure to assist the FBI."
Next to him, the older guard gave a creaky sigh.
"Right, well we've gotta be hitting the road. You needin' a ride back, Clarice?"
Vale flicked his eyes over to read Starling's reaction. She didn't seem the first name type, but her reaction to the guard was simply a polite smile.
"No thank you, Sergeant, I'll catch a ride with Vale. We're heading the same way."
So she had called him out here simply to sponge a ride? Vale wondered whether he should be offended.
"Mr Roe, Captain Grayson, thanks for meetin' up with me at such short notice. You've been real helpful."
Vale noticed that her native accent reasserted itself somewhat as she talked to them.
"Ma'am." Both guards inclined their heads.
Vale bid them his own farewell.
The two guards creaked to their feet. The Lieutenant was overweight and it took a hefty lunge to counteract the effects of gravity. The Sergeant, younger and lithe, leapt to his feet with the air of a man eager to please. He gave Starling a twitchy smile as pair of them swaggered off towards the deli counter to pay the bill.
Vale slipped into the vacated booth, trying to avoid the stains of greasy fingers on the vinyl padding.
"Nice place."
"It worked fine for its purpose."
Starling's polite fawning had vanished and was replaced with weariness. She gave a sigh and rubbed her forehead.
"So, what do you need me for?" Vale asked, after his partner made no effort to elaborate on the situation.
"Oh," She gave him sheepish look. "At risk of sounding like a bitch, I needed a ride back and didn't think I could suffer another trip with Starsky and Hutch."
"You called me for a ride?"
"I figured you still owed me for lunch last two days."
Vale considered this. He probably did.
"Ok, so why are you even here in the first place?"
"Trying to get a feel for Securicon."
"But why, Starling? The case is as good as closed."
"Then why not?" Starling shrugged. "We might as well have all the information when we send him down."
Why not? There were only about a million reasons.
"This guy killed a United States Senator's wife in cold blood. He ain't getting nothing less than the needle for that."
Starling looked away, turning her attention to the deli's window. Her eyes followed a group of students as they traipsed by, nothing on their minds but the trivial problems of the young and hopeful.
"I know what I'm doing, Vale."
Vale bit his lip. He knew what he wanted to say, but was unsure how to proceed without getting his ass shot off.
"Listen, Clarice..." He ran his hand over his chin, agitatedly. "I'm worried – and Mapp's worried – that you're getting too involved with this case."
"I know what I'm doing, Agent." She repeated, cool as liquid nitrogen.
Vale paused, and then forced himself to go on.
"For what it's worth, I agree with you on Mendez. I don't doubt that he loved her, not for a second. But that doesn't mean he didn't take that forty-eight calibre and fire it into her pretty little head. The evidence – the hard facts – shows that he blew her skull out."
"I know what the facts say."
"Then perhaps we should leave it at that."
"Sometimes, Vale, the truth is something more than what you can prove in court." Starling spoke quietly. She finally moved her eyes from the window and back onto Vale's. "He didn't fire that gun, Benedict."
"Then who-."
"I don't know, but it was not Mendez. The pathology isn't there – he's not a killer!"
"You can tell that from one interview?"
"Two."
"I see you've been carrying out your own little investigation."
"I went to see him this morning."
"So he tells you he's innocent and you just believe him? You know that when they first brought him in he blamed everyone from God to the Senator for that woman's death?"
It was a point over which the judge had tightened his jaw; an accusation of murder against Maryland's most popular bureaucrat. Senator Woodley had friends in high places, in the courtroom and beyond. White collar Maryland was a small pool the Woodley family were big fish. Mendez's accusation against the senator had been treated with such utter contempt that the Mexican had not bothered to bring it up a second time, at his final trial.
Vale sighed and thought of all the things he would rather be discussing than Ianto Mendez.
The case should be a slam-dunk. All the evidence was there; perfectly laid out to convict Mendez. So what if Mendez's pathology profile was slightly off? Profiling wasn't a cut and dry affair. And psychology seemed superfluous when you had a beautiful Senator's wife, lying dead in her scorned ex-lover's arms; the gardener's prints all over the gun that put a three inch hole through her temporal bone.
There was nothing complicated about this murder. The motive was as old as time itself; love, two men, one woman.
"He just doesn't strike me as confrontational." Starling continued, drumming her fingers absently across the formica tabletop.
"I don't know," Vale muttered, "he seemed pretty frenetic towards the end of our interview."
"Oh, come on. You provoked him, Vale – you impugned his 'great love'! He was just pissed off."
Vale groaned and leant back in his booth. The sounds of the grubby restaurant around them filtered back in through the gap in conversation.
Eventually, Starling blew out a heavy breath.
"Listen, I'm sorry, Vale – just forget about it." She yawned widely. "I'm exhausted and I'm putting two and two together an' getting five."
"It's ok." The agent replied. "And I'm sorry too, if I've been short about any of this. I do appreciate the input, you know. Your experience in profiling outstrips mine by a long shot."
Starling watched him guardedly for a moment and then let a smile curl her lips.
"Well I am a bit rusty."
Vale smiled back at her. Friendly again. It felt like a great relief.
"You ready to head back?"
"Yeah." Starling wrinkled her nose slightly. "The smell of this place is making me nauseous. Sorry for draggin' you out here." She added, a tad sheepishly.
Vale couldn't drum up any ill feelings. He was too tired and Starling had just been trying to help with the case.
"It's no problem."
"I had this chance to talk with the guards and I had to take it." She shrugged. "Ardelia said I could trust you to have my back."
Vale felt an inappropriate surge of pride.
"Happy to help."
.
Starling gave a cursory thanks to the waitress as they pushed their way out of the deli, into the lukewarm afternoon. Vale's pickup was parked halfway down the street, under an oak sapling. The sun filtered through, dappling the red panelling with light.
Once out in the car, the two agents sat for a moment, taking in the afternoon.
"Listen, Agent Starling, there's somethin' I need to tell you."
He ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling the down of his hair, longer than he was used to from long years in the Marine corps.
"Shoot." A weariness was in her eyes, like she knew what was coming.
"It's about this morning."
Starling's eyes slid off his, to the street outside, watching the dappled sun through the trees.
"We went to see Lecter at the MCAC." Vale continued.
"I know. Dee told me last night."
"Have you spoken to her since?"
"No. She's not called by. I tried her cell earlier, but got no answer."
Vale knew he shouldn't tell her. Mapp would flip. But he couldn't help but feel it was wrong to keep her in the dark.
"I don't know if she's gonna want me telling you 'bout this, but… it involves you."
"He wants to see me."
"Yes."
"He wants a deal. What did he propose?" Her voice was calm. She knew already.
Of course she knew, Vale reminded himself, she had lived with him for three years. She knew more about the guy than anyone else.
"He wants to talk to me." Starling murmured, closing her eyes, thoughtfully. "In exchange for what?"
"A guilty plea."
"What?" Her eyes opened and met his own, suddenly angry.
"He'll plea guilty and submit to psychiatric evaluation, to prove he is sane, if he can have a face-to-face with you. Just the two of you. One-one-one."
"But a guilty plea as a sane man – fourteen counts of murder one – that's the Death Penalty, no possible reprieve!"
Startled by her outburst, Vale remained quiet for a moment or two.
"He'll probably try an' back out of it."
"No," Starling shook her head, her voice calmer this time. "He wouldn't, not if he's given his word."
Vale's eyebrow jerked.
"His word?"
"He's..." Starling struggled for the right words. "He's just like that. He wouldn't go back on his word, not if you stuck to yours. He would consider such behaviour beneath him. He has this highly defined moral code."
"No kiddin'?" Vale muttered sarcastically.
"That said, I'd examine the terms of his deal pretty carefully. If he's left a loop hole and you miss it," she laughed coolly "he'd see using it as being entirely justified."
Vale wondered whether everyone talked about their cannibal captors this lightly, post-abduction.
"He's a true sociopath, huh?"
Starling glanced over and hummed enigmatically.
"Either way," he shrugged, in an effort to appear nonchalant. "The deal's not going to happen. Ardelia's not biting."
The smallest of smiles appeared on Starling's lips.
"I'll bet." She sighed.
"I just thought you should know."
Vale turned the key in his ignition and grimaced at the rusty rumbling of the pickup's engine. The turnover, with each rotation, shook the suspension and sent shudders up through seats up front.
"Thanks, Vale."
With a nod, he pulled the pickup into gear and pulled out into the slow afternoon traffic. Beside him, Starling pulled one leg across the other and folded her arms across her belly. It was a subconscious protective gesture. Vale wondered whether she even knew she was doing it. He had found out about the baby from Ardelia, during the earliest weeks of Starling's liberation. Starling had never said a thing about it, so he had chosen not to ask. They were colleagues. It would have been inappropriate.
Starling sighed wistfully as she gazed out the window. Whatever she was thinking of had brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. Vale wondered to himself, what things that could make Clarice Starling smile, after all that she had been through. Perhaps, a secret too precious to share?
He hoped it was something good.
.
Clarice Starling's eyes travelled over buildings and faces, dancing across patches of light and shade. The smoothness of the road, and the lull of the engine beneath her, lent itself to quiet contemplation. The world behind the windows seemed distant and surreal, bathed in sunlight and painted in colours too vibrant to be true. The sun itself was low in the sky, perhaps too low for it to be considered summer. Autumn, then, pondered Starling. She caught sight of a tree and, in passing, noted that its leaves were beginning to yellow at the tips. Beautiful. Dark green veins running from each other, spreading outwards into the extremities of each leaf finger. Each leaf was segmented delicately; a symmetry that only nature could obtain. Infinitely perfect.
Starling sighed. She hoped Hannibal had a view.
Beside her, in the car, Vale's forehead had darkened with a soft frown. Starling watched her new partner in the passenger mirror, aware that he was too occupied in his own mind to know she was watching. His frown deepened, and mouth twitched, forming the shadows of words unspoken. A tiny smile and his forehead smoothed for a moment, then another frown. Whatever he was thinking of was consuming all of his attentions, because he almost missed their turn off, and was forced to jerk back to reality with a guilty expression, when the sedan behind them honked their horn.
"Asshole."
Starling stifled a smile. She liked Vale. Sharing the Woodley case, especially with her, had not come easy to him. He was a keen worker and a good Agent but he was young and his mind was closed to possibilities beyond his experience. His profile on Mendez stuck primarily to the FBI textbook, and he seemed loathe to deviate from it. Starling wondered what had drawn him to the Behavioural Sciences unit in the first place - he seemed more of a field agent than a profiler. She had the quietest, most carefully unvoiced, opinion that Ardelia Mapp had something to do with it.
"Vale?"
He glanced over; expression young and uncomplicated. She had pulled him from another reverie.
"Yup?"
"I want you to broker the deal with Lecter's attorney."
"You want me to what?" Vale asked tentatively, though he knew what she was talking about.
"It's going to get you your sentence, Vale, so I'll see him."
She had given the subject much consideration. Lecter's request was, after all, inevitable – he knew it was what was expected of him. He had made his request under the assumption that Starling was going to do as he had told her to do and move on with her life. But if there was one thing that Clarice Starling had been repeatedly rebuked for, all her life, it had been her headstrong attitude in the face of instructions she disagreed with.
Escape plans had been slower in forming than Starling had originally counted on. But her diligent work over the last few weeks, using the FBI's extensive blueprint collections and inside information, had paid off. One of the main flaws in her plan was how to deliver it to her incarcerated lover. After all, Starling could hardly send the instructions for Lecter's escape in an email or a letter. She needed a more subvert method. And nothing was so subvert as the blatantly obvious. She would tell him herself.
The FBI had protocols to follow. They would grant him a preliminary meeting with her to prove their allegiance to the deal. Starling knew that agents would be monitoring the exchange too closely for her to slip him anything there, but – as she had ascertained from Vale earlier, Lecter had asked for a private meeting. No speakers, just the two of them. Lecter would be cuffed, but he could hear as well as the next man. She would have her method of delivering the plans.
Less rational impulses spurred her to agree to the deal, also. The desire to see his eyes again, and hear his voice, was overpowering.
"Will you do it?" she asked her partner.
Next to her in the car, Vale swallowed slightly.
Starling knew that he was deeply uneasy with the 'Lecter' subject. To add to the already understandable discomfort of the situation, she suspected that Mapp had also told him about her pregnancy. Every now and then she caught him glancing down at her abdomen, during conversation about Lecter. But, despite these slight indiscretions and the slight awkwardness, Vale had made a commendable effort. Unlike some of her other colleagues, he did not actively avoid the subject. Nor did he make a spectacular exit of the room if Lecter came up in conversation. He was kind and always courteous. Really, thought Starling, Mapp could do much worse than Benedict Vale.
"Starling, are you sure?"
She nodded, careful to keep her expression neutral.
"Hannibal Lecter doesn't make deals lightly, Vale. If you agree, then he will hold his end of the bargain up. He will sit those evaluations and he will score as a sane man."
"You think he's sane, then?"
Starling fixed Vale with a stare. Despite his work in tracing Lecter down, he really didn't understand the first thing about her dark paramour.
"It doesn't matter what he is. He knows those tests inside out. He could appear as anything he chose to." She lifted the intensity of her gaze from his face and added, with a sigh. "But yes, I think he is sane."
Vale pulled up to a red traffic light, allowing the engine to idle.
"And Vale?"
He looked over at her. Starling felt a prick of worry at the glimmering of ambition in his eyes.
"Don't try and play him. And keep up your end of the deal. If he wants to see me, face-to-face, you give him it. If he wants one-on-one, with no microphones, you give him it. Vale," She cut him off as he began to speak. "And don't worry about me. I know what I'm doing. He'll be in restraints and I'll be ok." She bit her lip before adding what she felt might be a slightly too-dramatic line. "If I've managed through the last three years I think I can manage another thirty minutes with him."
Vale's eyes did another nervous flicker, and then he set a strong jaw and nodded firmly.
"And I can't change your mind 'bout this?"
"Nope." Starling threw him a wry smile. "I'll just go over your head, straight to Pearsall."
"Can you do that?"
"Can and will."
A moment or two passed.
"You do know Ardelia's gonna have kittens when she finds out 'bout this, right?"
"I'll be the one to tell her." How she was going to do that and not get shot, Starling was not entirely sure, but she knew it had to be her who did the deed. "I'll leave your name out of it – say I heard about the deal on the grapevine or something." She added.
Vale looked relieved.
Above them, the traffic light turned to amber, then green. Vale gunned the engine as they pulled out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, pointing them towards the Hoover building. More trees flickered past, their leaves a little more yellow than the ones they had passed earlier. Starling folded her arms more tightly against one another.
So it was decided. She would meet with him. He would plead guilty. He would be sentenced and stay in the MCAC. She had researched long and hard on what would happen to a death row inmate. Protocol demanded that they were kept in single cells, but not in solitary. And, as it turned out, the only place suitable for housing a man such as Hannibal, in Maryland, where he was to be tried, was the same Supermax facility he was now in. The same prison she had full blueprints and personnel deployment plans for... The same block that ex-Securicon guard Jason Roe now worked on.
Starling disguised her shiver of pleasure as a yawn. Maybe she could bring Hannibal a leaf or something when she visited. He would like that.