"Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders, smooth as raven's claws."
"Robert Frost." Zeller guessed incorrectly.
"Jim Morrison." Will and Hannibal said similtainouusly, though the room chose to stare down Hannibal about that correct assessment.
"Even a drunk with a flair for the dramatic can convince himself he's God," Beverly said as she pulled fishing hooks out of flaps of flesh that were meant to be wings. "Or the Lizard King."
"No, wait. Hold up. You know about Jim Morrison?" Zeller wasn't willing to let it go as he honed in on Hannibal.
"Who doesn't like 'People Are Strange'?" Hannibal pointed out, making the room laugh, Will included. His reasons were vastly different, but it was still funny.
"He's a keeper." Price chuckled.
"Don't I know it." Will said one of those filler phrases that normal people liked to hear in conversation, but was wildly appropriate.
"So, God makes angels. Jesus was fond of fishermen. Are we talking hardcore JudeoChristian upsetting, or just upsetting in general?" Price asked.
"This is a very specific upsetting." Will decided.
"Increased serotonin in the Bloons is much higher than the free histamines, so, uh, she lived about 15 minutes after she was skinned." Zeller grimaced.
"Powder residue on the neck of the soda bottle shows Vecuronium. Scotch and water, and a paralytic agent." Price said, who wished he had some damn scotch.
"Kneeling in supplication at the feet of G-dash-D." Zeller said.
"Supplication is the most common form of prayer. Gimme, gimme, gimme." Price said.
"Religion was invented to ease the fear of death, and take control of the masses." Hannibal said, looking over the lab reports. "Our Angel Maker has a brain tumor."
"Are you sure about that?" Zeller dared to ask to receive a dead shark-eyed, flat look of 'try me, bitch' from Hannibal.
"They weren't praying to him. They were praying for him." Will couldn't help, but smile as Hannibal started thoroughly educate Zeller about why he knew it was a brain tumor in the background.
"What is somebody who could do something like this afraid of?" Beverly asked, "Are you going to go save, Z?"
"He's afraid of dying in his sleep. He's making angels to watch over him." Will said, "And, no, I'm not. He brought it upon himself."
"That he did, plus Will knows better than to get between a predator and its prey." Hannibal said, who was done tearing Zeller up one side and down the other. "There is not only one spiritual center of the brain. Any idea of God comes from many different areas of the mind working together in unison."
"That's why I am an atheist." Price said, shaking his head.
"Maybe I was wrong. How do you profile someone who has an anomaly in their head changing the way they think?" Will went back to staring down the corpses.
"A tumor can definitely affect your brain function, even cause vivid hallucinations. However, what appears to be driving the Angel Maker to create heaven on earth is a simple issue of mortality." Hannibal said as he joined Will at his side.
"Can't beat God, become him?" Will snorted.
"That, or the Lizard King." Beverly said.
"You said he was afraid." Hannibal said.
"He feels abandoned."
"Ever feel abandoned, Will?"
"Abandonment requires expectations. You'll find I have none." Which apparently was the wrong kind of thing to say to other people. The science team was staring back at him with mixed reactions. Hannibal too, but best not to get into that now.
"Damn, how sad was your childhood?" Zeller voiced his opinion first.
"If he were a classic paranoid schizophrenic, you might be able to influence him to become visible." Hannibal broke up the unwelcome focus on Will.
"What, scare him out into the daylight?" Didn't seem likely to the profiler.
"Might even get him to hurt himself, if he hasn't already." Hannibal doing his elevated version of spit balling ideas. He knew Will could keep up.
"If he were self-destructive, he wouldn't be so careful." Will rubbed his knuckles against his stubble, enjoying the sound of it as he thought. If he kept it up though, he was going to get shaved again.
"Unless he's careful about being self-destructive. Making angels to pray over him when he sleeps." Hannibal said, "Who prays over us when we sleep?"
"I advocate for sweet oblivion." Price said.
"You really want to just cease existing?" Zeller asked.
"I think Heaven and Hell sounds too much like a bedtime story." Price said, "My way is cleaner."
"So what? You're being practical?" Zeller asked.
"It makes the most sense to me." Price shrugged.
"I'm hedging my bet on reincarnation." Beverly said.
"Oof, that just sounds exhausted. Who would want to go through puberty ever again?" Price made a face.
"I might if I could remember all of my past life. If I knew what I know now in my twenties, lemme tell you, it'd be a whole new ball game." Zeller said, "What about you two? Taking the stairway to Heaven, the highway to Hell, the merry-go-round of reincarnation, or being completely deleted?"
" I've always found the idea of death comforting. The thought that my life could end at any moment frees me to fully appreciate the beauty and art and horror of everything this world has to offer." Hannibal said, "Not knowing what comes afterward is the last great adventure. I'm not going to waste time worrying about it."
"God can't save any of us because it's inelegant. Elegance is more important than suffering. That's his design." Will said, "I don't want to go to Heaven. No one I care about will be there."
"I was not expecting any of that." Price said after a long moment of quiet.
"Have you been able to determine how the Angel Maker is choosing his victims?" Hannibal asked Will.
"He doesn't see people how everyone else sees them. He can tell if your naughty or nice, or he thinks he can." Will sighed, understanding it and yet not at all.
"So god has given this person the insight into the souls of men." Hannibal mused.
"God didn't give him insight. God gave him a tumor." Will said, cutting through the Ripper's drama.
"How will we find him then?" Hannibal asked him.
"We won't. Not like this. I've already tried to reconstruct his thinking, find his patterns." Will shook his head.
"The Angel Maker is searching for a sweet and easy peace. He hopes to feel his way cautiously inside it, and find it endless all around him." Hannibal
"He's gonna be disappointed." Will snorted out contempt.
"You accept the impossibility of such a feeling, whereas the Angel Maker is still chasing it." Hannibal said, "If he got close to it, that's why he will look for it again."
"So we are expecting another body if Angel Maker decides it's time to go night-night?" Price asked.
"I would be more surprised by the absence of one." Hannibal said, and he wasn't wrong.
"Oh, what the fuck." Was Will inner monologue upon arriving at the scene. A new angel was suspended high overhead. It was going to take a moment to get him down without destroying potentially vital evidence. Will and Hannibal stared up at the inconvenient corpse, the pair in very different head spaces about its placement.
"Why angels?" Jack asked when he joined them.
"Well, it isn't biblical. His angels have wings." Will said, glancing over to get a blank look from Jack. "Um, angels in sculptures and paintings can fly, but not in scripture."
"The confusion stems from the popularity of the Putti with the artists of the Renaissance era. The distinction between the Putti and the Cherubim have also been blurred by modern english." Hannibal added, "The depictions of chubby winged babies are actually giant angels made of various animal parts with four faces and four conjoined wings covered in eyes that guard the throne of God in literature."
"He's drawing from secular sources?" Jack asked.
"His mind has turned against him, and there is no one there to help." Will said, wishing he could get a closer look.
"Uh, Jack, look at this." Zeller didn't sound like his normal self, Will preparing himself for what lay behind them.
"Are those...What are those?" Price was almost everyone's reaction put to words. On his part, Hannibal had already noticed them, but he politely joined everyone as they stare down at the contents of the filthy mattress.
"Someone got an orchiectomy real cheap." Zeller said, shaking his head at the mess.
"Doesn't look like the victim." Beverly checked with her flashlight, their angel intact down below.
"So they're the Angel Maker's?" Price looked askance. Will was a little surprised by that. Usually, Price was a lot more nonchalant, but Will guessed everyone had that one thing that gets under your skin despite all the experience.
"He castrated himself." Beverly looked rather impressed about it.
"The survival rate of reported cases of self-castration are remarkable high, despite the blood loss." Hannibal said, because of course, he would know that.
"So he isn't just making angels." Price said.
"He's getting ready to become one." Will sighed. He was met with some confusion about that. "Angels don't have genitalia."
"So he was afraid of dying." Jack said, "Now he's, what, getting used to the idea?"
"He's accepting it, or he's bargaining?" Will's mind scrambled about, but he was at a loss about the thinking on this one, all due to the wild card tumor.
"So, does thus mean he's done making angels, or is he just getting started?" Jack was starting to sound irritated. That never boded well for anyone.
"I don't know." Will said.
"Well, he's not just killing them when he's sleepy. I mean, how is he choosing them?" Jack was getting louder the longer this went on.
"I don't know! Ask him!" Will's exasperation got the better of him.
"I'm asking you!" Jack yelled.
"You're the head of the he Behavioral Science Department! Why don't you come up with your own answers if you don't like mine?!" Will snapped back.
"I did not hear that!" Jack bellowed, his voice bouncing off the alley's walls. Beverly, Price, and Zeller didn't quite run away, but they definitely power walked their way out of the line of fire. Will really couldn't blame them, or stir up any resentment. He would have done the same thing if he could. "Did I?"
Jack was obviously waiting for a response or an apology or both, none of which Will wanted to give. What he got was Hannibal putting himself between them.
"That's enough, Jack. He's right." What was impressive about Hannibal was that he never had to shout to be heard. Hell, he hardly ever had to raise his voice.
"Excuse me?!" Unlike Jack.
"Will is not some Oracle of Delphi that you can keep ravaging for answers because you don't care for one of his predictions, or lack there of." Hannibal was a wall of calm in the face of Jack's anger. He was completely unperturbed by it as he took Will by the hand, taking their leave of him. "I think that is more than enough for now. We're done here. We'll meet you back at the lab.
"You don't speak for me." Will said even as he allowed himself be led away.
"In this instance, I do." Something in Hannibal's voice made Will think better about arguing with him at the moment.
This didn't feel like the first time when Hannibal stood up to Jack in Minnesota. That had purely been about Hannibal showing off his power over Jack.
This time was different. Will didn't know why, but it felt important he found out though, and to do so quickly.