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AN- Yes, I am fully aware about the chapters. My laptop is dead so I'm working off of my phone, which btw is not fun for me, and the app won't let me remove the effing repeat chapter. I've tried. I've been trying for months. Unless one of ya'll wanna buy me a new laptop, might I suggest you hit the next chapter and quit nagging me about it. If I could fix it, I would. If it bothers you that freaking much, just quit reading the fic. I'm sick of it. I'm not getting paid to do this. This takes up a lot of my free time. I could be literally doing anything else. Anyone want to help me out? No? Great. Quit bitching to me about the goddamn repeat chapter, or I swear to fuck I will delete this entire story. Try me. I'm exhausted physically/emotionally/spiritually, stressed the fuck out, and yes, I am that fucking vindictive and petty if ya'll don't get off my ass about the goddamn repeat chapter. Now if ya'll wanna act like adults, realizing to click "next chapter" take less than a second to do so, enjoy the story.
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"Has anyone touched the body?" Jack boomed loud enough to make a few newbies and other attending officers jump.
"Do I smell coffee?" Beverley asked the important question, already homing in on Hannibal. He had charmed a maid into getting some cups for him.
"Help yourself. I thought you all might need the caffeine." Hannibal said as he was all but bum rushed by the team for the fragrant steaming fuel. "Claire was kind enough to bring sugar and cream along with the cups."
Claire being the enamored maid, and Hannibal being the odd murder duck of quirks, but that's why he was so Teflon. People wanted to like him, and be liked back by him, no matter what their station was in life. It was brilliant psychological terrorism on Hannibal's part.
"Can anyone answer my question?" Jack prompted again.
"For once, local police behaved themselves." Zeller managed out first. He took his coffee with not enough cream to cool it down, burning his tongue in the process.
"It's fairly evident the man's dead just by looking at him." Price took his time with precise amounts of the cream and sugar, only after inhaling the aroma of the brew.
"I touched the body. A lot going on with that body." Beverly took her coffee black as night and sweet as sin. Will realized that he was quirky too as he made a mental note about how everyone took their coffee for whatever reasons. Brains are strange meat computers.
"Surgery was performed-" Price started.
"And then un-performed." Hannibal called from the bathroom to finish for him, already beside the body to inspect it.
"I taste dark chocolate notes with a spiced finish. Jamaican?" Price was a man who apparently knew and enjoyed his coffee.
"It is an organic Blue Moon from Bali. I find it's an excellent coffee for group likability. My own personal preference is Grand Moka Matari from Yemen." Hannibal said, "It is full bodied with bright acidity. It has delicate notes of apricot, dark chocolate, and dates with just hint of spice and caramel."
"I love your palette." Price sighed, a mixture of reverence and envy.
"Have him brew you a cup from the most complicated coffee maker I've ever seen when you stop by for the bees." Will snorted, though he really couldn't blame Price. It was damn good coffee.
"Complicated how?" Price immediately honed in on Will with a certain intensity.
"It looks more like it should be in a lab reanimating the dead than a kitchen." Will shrugged, "All silver and glass with tubing."
"Oh my stars and garters, don't tell me you have a Classic Palladium Vacuum Coffeemaker?" Price gasped.
"Guilty as charged. You know your coffee craft." No one should look that cheerful beside a corpse.
"Need I remind everyone that we've got a body and a possible Ripper case on our hands?" Jack brought them all out of their caffeinated bliss.
"It's not the Ripper. Can I go now?" Will said, already knowing the answer to that, but hey, maybe one day he'd get lucky. It was obviously not Hannibal's doing. For one thing, it was far too...messy? Will decided that the word 'unprofessional' fit better. Jack looked like he was about to have an aneurism so Will took that as a hard no.
"Surgery was un-performed with bare hands, sutures clawed open." Zeller launched into it before realizing that Jack was staring him down. "I, uh, I also...did a little bit of touching."
Will snorted, moving toward the bathroom as he followed a trail of sorts. Zeller should just own it like Beverly.
"Pieces of him were torn off from the bed to the bathroom, like breadcrumbs." Price supplied as they all followed after Will to join Hannibal. The bathroom from messy, but not as messy as it could or should have been.
"Surgery wasn't performed here." Will said as he took it all in.
"Yes, there would be a lot more blood." Hannibal agreed. He would know best, but that didn't keep Will from rolling his eyes at the corpse.
"If he's moving his victims, he could be performing the mutilations in a some sort of transport." Beverly said.
"Find the car, find the killer." Price said, sounded pleased though it was usually easier said than done.
"He tore open his own sutures." Will said aloud as he turned that tidbit over to cook a little bit longer in his head.
"It wasn't to get to his kidney." Price said.
"It's already been removed." Hannibal confirmed, kneeling back down to study the body in the tub closer.
"The Ripper already took it with him." Beverly said, "Or her."
"I'd say him." Price grumbled.
"I would have to agree, though some of the most prominent serial killers have been women." Hannibal said, making some heads whip around to look at him. "Giulia Tofana was a professional poisoner in the mid-1600's. Her creation, known as Aqua Tofana was a odorless and tasteless poison that is believed to have killed over 600 people, most of which were men."
"We know Aqua Tofana was made mostly out of lead, arsenic, and belladonna, but the original recipe probably died with its creator when she was eventually executed." Will added, "Someone got cold feet when it came to murdering their husband."
"She doesn't count." Zeller argued, "That would be like accusing a cashier of collaborating in murder for selling someone rat poison."
"Are you so quick to deny Tofana her status because she merely created and sold the poison with that sole intent, or that she was a woman?" Hannibal mused. Will debated with himself whether or not to intervene.
"Whoa! Hey, I believe in equal opportunity when it comes to murder." Zeller said, "C'mon, that's a stretch."
"Didn't make her victims any less dead." Will snorted.
"Then perhaps you should consider her sales pitch. That she convinced over 600 people to kill. She taught them to how to administer the poison. Her clients had to be vetted. One would hope that there would only one murder per client, but even if that was the case, Tofana actively took part in over 600 murders, the ones that they know of anyway."
"Holy shit." Zeller took it all in. Poison was a nasty business.
"My money is on the Bloody Baroness, Elizabeth Báthory. The highest number stated at her trail was 650. Her victims were mostly girls and young women, though it's been claimed that the number is much higher than that." Will said.
"Yeah, but she had help." Zeller seemed to want to die on this hill, so Will let him.
"That many people? I would think so." Hannibal chuckled, "She was a petite woman."
"What did he take out of the chest?" Jack snapped.
"Going for the heart. Probably interrupted. It's intact. Traumatized, but it's intact." Zeller said, which should have been another clue. The Ripper was an artist who set up elaborate themes. He took great care not to be interrupted. This scene was far too kinetic to be the Ripper. His kills were museum quality. This was run of the mill, teenage graffiti.
"Everyone out!" Jack ordered, pausing at the door. "Doctor?"
"I do believe that I shall remain with dear Will." Hannibal said, which was fine by Will. The good doctor was excellent about keeping other people out of rooms, and knowing the exact amount of personal space Will needed to work in. Fuck him for making things so goddamn effortless at times like these.
The room, the scene, was all gone with a couple of mind swipes. In its place was the same room, but with a new occupant. There was a stag with glossy black raven feathers waiting for him. It had an air of impatience about it.
"You're new." Will greeted the strange beast. It did not appear to be violent or even afraid of him. The stag with feathers, the Ravenstag, snorted at him before wandering away towards the bathroom.
"Well, okay then. I guess this is a thing now. Great." Will muttered as he followed after the mental manifestation. He hoped that this was some new harmless quirk, and not another reason to keep drinking. One of these days, he's gonna have to stop lying to himself. It was never a harmless quirk, and there were oceans of liquor ahead of him.
"Everything all right, dear Will?" The Ravenstag asked in Hannibal's voice as he entered the bathroom. Will stared back at it.
"Peachy. Just peachy." Will sighed, firmly turning attention back to the body. Restart was hit, and off they went.
"Signs of a struggle indicate he suffered from a severe, violent emergence from deep sedation." Will narrated as he went through the motions of this man's murder. "I open his chest wall. I spread the ribs. I...I take his heart in my hand so I can-"
"What do you see?" Hannibal asked, Will back in the real world where Hannibal just looked like himself.
"Something very disturbing, and that's saying something coming from me." Will shook himself, wondering if he should mention the Ravenstag. His gut told Will to keep that gem to himself.
"What could possibly so disturbing about this?" The notorious serial killer asked beside the fresh corpse.
"If we weren't at a crime scene, I might be up for some riddles in the dark." Will said.
"No need. You're already my precious." Was the unexpected answer.
"I take it you've read the books, but have you seen the movies?" Will asked. Hannibal just stared in answer at him. "Movie marathon it is then. Clear a weekend from Friday to Sunday."
"An entire weekend?" Hannibal looked almost askance.
"Yup. Only the strong survive here. I'm including the Hobbit trilogy along with the other three. All director's cut, extended edition." Will said.
"How is the Hobbit a trilogy? It's a singular book, and not a particularly long one, at least not long enough to merit three movies."
"It's a little over 22 hours long." Which gave Hannibal reason to pause.
"I don't know whether to be intrigued or concerned."
"The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy runs for around 28 hours and some change." Will informed Hannibal, enjoying the look on his face.
"I'll have to decline." Hannibal decided.
"I'll put you down as my emergency contact." Will tried to sweeten the pot.
"I already am."
"I don't know why I'm even a little surprised by that." Will kinda miffed at himself about that one. "I'll willingly go the the opera again."
"You'll do that anyway. You enjoyed the performance, not so much the socialization." Hannibal challenged.
Gotcha.
"I'll allow you to create a space for yourself upstairs at my place, whatever and however you want."
"We'll marathon your vile cinema the weekend after the dinner party." Hook, line, and sinker. "What are your thoughts about this killer?"
"That they weren't actually trying to kill." Will sighed.
"Agreed. This was done by a novice."
"Everyone is a novice to you." Will rolled his eyes, "We better call Jack in before he blows a blood vessel."
"This wasn't brutal. The killer was trying to save his life with internal cardiac massage. Has the Ripper ever done that? Tried to save a life?" Was what Will greeted Jack with. The science team decided to hang back in the doorway. If Jack's expression was anything to go by, it was a good decision on their parts.
"It's the Chesapeake Ripper." Zeller losing brownie points with Will as he tried to earn them back from Jack.
"It's not the Ripper." Will sounded bored even to himself.
"There are too many similarities."
"This crime scene has about as many similarities as a chicken does with a human." Hannibal said, making everyone pause.
"What?" Zeller
"He's referencing Plato and Diogenes Laërtius." Price said in the tone of 'obviously'.
"What do some dead Greek philosophers have to do with anything?" Zeller looked around the room for some support. He was not liking what he saw back.
"Plato once defined humans as a 'featherless bipeds'. Diogenes Laërtius, also known as Diogenes the Cynic, presented him with a plucked chicken at his academy." Beverly said, "Behold! A man!"
"How does everyone else know about this guy?" Zeller looked a little bewildered by his colleagues.
"The arts and humanities are just as important as the hard sciences." Hannibal said.
"Well chickens aside, there are too many similarities here to ignore." Zeller scoffed.
"There aren't enough." Will said, hoping his assessment would land this time, but to no avail.
"Knife wounds are cuts, not stabs. Anatomical knowledge, dissection skills, mutilation, organ removal, victim clothed and on display." Zeller rattled off, and technically speaking, he wasn't wrong. The vibe of the murder was just as important as its definitives though.
"Comparatively to the Ripper, how is he on display? This man is propped up in a bathtub with his kidney missing." Oops, Zeller has stepped in it now. Hannibal was not amused.
"It's the Ripper." Was all Zeller got out before Will shut the bathroom door in his face. He'd live longer.
"Are you sure?" Jack asked, the man being quiet for once. It was disconcerting. He was breaking, slowly.
"Yup." Oh boy was he sure.
"Tell me why you're sure?"
Will faked a moment of deep thought to collect himself. It was either that or started hysterically laughing. "Doctor Lecter, perhaps you'd might like to field this one?"
"I would love to." The Ripper said, "The Ripper left a victim in a church pew, using his tongue as a page maker in the Bible he was holding."
"You're both sure it's not the Ripper because of aesthetics?" Jack challenged. Hannibal was up for it while Will sat this one out to watch. In his defense, Jack was a good agent. He would have to be to get where he was professionally, but Jack was completely shit at pursuing and capturing the bizarre, violent, and insane. They played by a set of rules that Jack just couldn't grasp, couldn't begin to comprehend.
"The long and short of it, yes. This scene lacks a signature to it, does it not? The devil is in the details, Jack." Hannibal said, "Where is the devil in this?"
"That, and the Ripper doesn't try to save his victims. This killer did. This is some medical student or someone trying to make an extra buck in a back alley surgery, and it went back."
"I would say actively bad." Hannibal said, "If I had to wager a guess, I would say that it's an EMT."
"It tracks." Will nodded, "No one is going to question the presence of an ambulance coming or going, even if it has blood in it."
"I'll have the team check surveillance. Maybe we'll get lucky." Jack bit out the words, clearly disappointed.
"Jack, you'll catch the Ripper eventually." Not if he had anything to do with it without solid, completely damning evidence.
"Yeah, well, I want to catch him now." Jack growled, "And when I do, I'm gonna shoot him."
"You can't just jack up the law and get underneath it." Will said warily, not liking where this was going, how things were turning in Jack's head.
"Can't I?" Jack stared Will for a tense moment before departing.
"Enjoying yourself?" Will sighed. It was just them and the dead guy for the moment.
"Immensely."