As soon as they got back to the lab, Jack ordered Will into his office.
"I need to speak to Will privately, Doctor Lecter." Jack told Hannibal before he could begin to follow them.
"You may need to, but is that what Will wants?"
"It's fine. Let's just get this over with." Will sighed. He didn't want to live through another long, drawn out conversation between Jack and Hannibal going back and forth with one another. Will was also done with playing quiet witness.
"Very well." Hannibal surprisingly conceded. Will almost asked him if he was feeling well.
"So…it's a celebration." Jack said as he took a seat behind his desk. Will chose to remain standing for various reasons, the main one being "I am not your friend; I will not share your table/space".
"Yes." Will wondered where this was going, "He's marking his achievements."
"And faced with this killer's achievements, your mind needed to escape?" Jack was fishing for something, insight and understanding possibly, but Will doubted it, doubted the agent's ability to find it and know it for what it was.
"Yeah, it did." Will said to have Jack stare him down with a thoughtful look.
"I'm worried about you, Will. You empathize too completely with these killers." Jack said, "But not feeling like yourself, that's kinda what you supposed do, isn't it?"
"Is this criticism or a compliment?" Will asked, wishing Jack would get to his point. It almost sounded like Jack was blaming him for using his "gift" so well, the one Will was using at Jack's insistence. Hannibal's too, but Jack started it first.
"Neither. It's just an observation." Because thank Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all their carpenter friends! Jack was finally noticing something. "Is there something you want to tell me?"
Will laughed and laughed at the ridiculous question. "Do I seem fine to you, Jack?" Will finally managed out, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "Here's an even better question-do you have anyone else who can do this any better than me unbroken?"
"Fear makes you rude, Will."
"Whose? Yours or mine?" Will was out for blood now that he had a taste for it. "I'm here for Hannibal." Which was true.
"Why?"
"Because he enjoys what he can contribute to the investigation." Also true. "Frankly, I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for Hannibal," he admitted, full disclosure. Will was experiencing the perverse joy of being the man-behind-the-curtains. No wonder Hannibal practically lived in that state of being. It was intoxicating.
It made Jack only glared in answer so Will took that as a sign to leave.
"You still all in one piece?" Beverley asked upon him rejoining the group.
"Mostly. I think I gave as good as I got this time." Will shrugged, embarrassed and an odd kind of little happy. It was strange feeling to experience someone having his back after being a loner with a target on his back for so long. "How many bodies?"
"We got 17 in total." Zeller said, "I swear I pull something from wincing when you pick shit with Jack."
"I dunno. I get a sudden urge for popcorn myself." Price looked practically giddy about it. "We've started a betting pool."
"Of when I'll punch Jack?" Will hazarded a guess.
"It's multitiered." Beverly added shamelessly, "There's also 'quit or fired' on the board."
"There's an entire board?" Hannibal asked, clearly amused.
"Yeah, it started out small, but then turned very 'Cabin in the Woods' explicit in detail." Zeller grinned.
"Am I on it as well?" Hannibal surprised no one by inquiring about his placement on it.
"We've already said too much about it." Price said, "Meet our freshest one, Joel Summers. Forty years old, runs a cell phone store in Knoxville, Tennessee…Or did. Been missing for three days."
"Single stab wound to the heart. Other injuries were postmortem- broken bones, dislocated hips, shoulders." Zeller added.
Will studied the dead man who got canceled before he had a chance to experience his first midlife crisis. "He was special to him somehow. He held a place of honor."
"You won't be surprised to hear that the seven bodies matched the earth found in the seven graves." Hannibal reading through some report, "There doesn't appear to be a noticeable pattern."
"Blunt force trauma, stabbings, strangulations. All wrongful deaths." Zeller rattled off.
"There are at least eight other bodies that are recent grave robberies frown all across West Virginia. No crime attributed to them." Beverly adding in, making visions, concepts, ideas, and a single random thought move and mingle in Will's head. He liked this part of it, getting everyone's expert professional input all at once. It made Will feel like a desert being blessed with rain after so many long years of drought, the seeds in his mind bursting up through the surface in response to it.
"They're all murders." Was the answer given up by that sudden oasis, "Anthony Lamb, 28, fatal car accident. Francesca Bourdain, 42, suicide, pills, 1994. Adrian Packham, 60, massive coronary, 2001. Peter McGee, 25, carbon monoxide poisoning in his home, 2006, and seven as yet unidentified bodies buried at the beach."
Will paced back and forth, pointing from victim to victim, feeling the influx of knowledge energize him. "Every death is different; made to look like something else. No sadism, no torture."
"Interesting. It would appear that the method of these murders was less important to the killer than the simple fact that these people had to die." Hannibal mused while looking so pleased about some inner working. Will refused to let it derail him.
"Exactly!" Will snapped his fingers at Hannibal like they were in his classroom. Rude? Perhaps, but he was on a roll here. "Joel Summers, killed with a single stab wound, presented with great ostentation atop a display of all the previous victims."
"The killer gets off on remaining unnoticed." Price said softly in thought.
"Yes, that's what excites him." Hannibal said.
"So, what? Our guy's a ghost?" Zeller grumped. No one in the lab liked the sound of that.
"Until now." Will thumbed their attention back to the very prominent picture of the totem pole.
The more important question here is," Hannibal pointed out, "Why is he coming out into the light after so long?"
"Another one showing off for the Ripper?" Zeller mused.
"Yes and no. He's definitely showing off, but more in a general sense. It feels like he wants to get caught." Will put that notion to bed real quick. He didn't want to think about Tobias anymore. "This is an older killer, alone and growing infirm."
"A loner with no family to take care of him now that his body is beginning to fail him." Hannibal reasoned out further.
"So, what? This is his final tour and he's breaking out his greatest hits?" Zeller said.
"If we don't find this guy, he'll just disappear." Beverly said, not happy about that notion.
"Which is something he has no desire to do." Hannibal said, "He'll be found in the evidence."
"Love a good game of Hide-n-Seek." Price smiled.
"I was more of a Red Rover fan." Beverly said, "Sometimes, it was the only way to smack any sense into my brothers and sisters without getting into trouble."
"The only real answer here is Tag." Zeller "Dare I ask either of you?"
"I rarely enjoyed the company of other children as a child, preferring to be left to my own devices." Hannibal said, "I read a lot."
"Fishing, swimming, also lots of reading." Will shrugged, "In the South or any small town, some of the only places with decent air conditioning or heating where a kid won't get bothered for spending lots of time there are libraries."
"You should write a country song about your life." Price said.
"And leave all this?" Will gestured to the corpses. "What about your betting pool?"
"Good point. Let's not be to hasty here." Price gasped at his own folly.
"Yeah, you can't take off before I win." Zeller said, looking way too confident for his own good.
"Which camp are you in? Quitting or getting fired?" Will had to ask.
"Who says those are the only two options?" Zeller smirked.
"Just don't tell Freddy Lounds about it." Will said casually, making the others laugh. He watched as Zeller paled a bit from the jab.
Secrets could be fun after all.