The labs were where it all began, Clarice thinks. This is where it was that Susana came on that damn field trip and just had to be the one to volunteer for the fucking DNA test. The labs owed her for this. Hopefully they would come through.
The beige case of her daughter's PC sits on a table, reminiscent of a patient on a gurney. For a moment Clarice thinks of Donnie Barber's corpse on the steel table at the morgue. She closes her eyes and swallows, forcing the vision away.
This past decade has been reasonably normal, as things go. She has been as free of Dr. Lecter as she can be. He has had no real place in her life. She has tried not to think about him. At least once a day, she has failed.
The technician looking over Susana's computer wears steel-rimmed spectacles and has an odd sense of humor. When she brought it in, he turned it on and scowled at it. It looked OK to Clarice at first glance.
"She FFR'ed it," the tech had explained.
"FFR?" Clarice had been blank.
"Fdisk, format, and reload," he had explained. "She blew away everything, formatted the drive, and reinstalled."
That doesn't sound good. "So there's nothing?" she'd asked. The tech had scowled at her as if she had insulted him.
"That's what they want you to think," he said. "Though here, we've probably got the best data-recovery facility on the planet."
Then he had whipped out a Leatherman tool, applied it to the back of the computer case, and set about his work, a digital surgeon preparing a hard-drive-ectomy. Deftly he removed the machine's hard drive and hooked it up to some other computer. Clarice watched him fiddle and scowl . Bright white light reflected off his glasses as he communed with the ghost in the machine. His lips moved in a chant under his breath. She had to lean in to catch it.
"You're so sly, but so am I."
Clickety-clickety-clickety go the keys. The tech clicks back on one screen and then goes to another. His lips skin back, exposing his teeth as if he could intimidate the machine that way.
"What sort of instant-messaging software did she use?" the tech asks.
Clarice blinks. "Huh?"
"What sort of instant-messaging software?"
She has to think. She'd seen it on her daughter's monitor countless times. What was the name of it? "Ummm…Trillian?"
The tech nods and turned back to the monitor. Behind her, Bowman watches patiently. He'd told her this guy was good, and she hoped he had not been just saying that to make her happy.
Clickety-clickety-clickety. "C'mon, c'mon," the tech grumbles. UNABLE TO RESTORE, replied the computer. Another program window opens up, and the tech's fingers race over the keyboard.
REBUILDING FILE ALLOCATION TABLE – REBUILD SUCCESSFUL, the computer announces.
The tech grins. "Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen," he crows. "Got it!"
"Told you he was good," Bowman rumbled behind her.
"Thanks, Gary," Clarice says to the tech, not sure where she pulled his name from.
"Bah. Easy. Elementary, my dear Watson. She just ran the recovery disks and didn't even FDISK. Course, there is one way to be sure all data has been removed from a hard drive."
Clarice leans in now, eager to see what clues the PC might have. "What's that?" she asks anxiously.
The tech grins. "Take it out, jump on it, cut it in pieces with a bandsaw, and run the pieces over with a truck," he comments. "You'd be surprised what we can pull up with our lab tech juju." He cackles
"Here we are," he says grandly. "Let's see….Program Files…Trillian…logs…and ah-ha! Look at these names and tell me if these are her friends. We don't need to wade through four megs of girly talk." He shudders delicately, as if girly talk will contaminate him somehow.
He indicates a list of file names. Clarice cranes her neck to look at them. Amikaaaah. That would be 'Delia's daughter. La Morba. No, Clarice doesn't think that was it. SportBabe211. No. Hotguy90245. That wouldn't be Dr. Lecter, but she'll have to have a look at that one later.
MarcusAurelius1938. She swallows, hearing Dr. Lecter's voice echo in her mind from many years ago.
Read Marcus Aurelius. The emperor counsels simplicity. What is it that he does…this…man you seek?
"That one," she says, and feels her stomach churn.
2/5/2020 19:52 MarcusAurelius1938: Hello. I saw your profile. Are you an Argentine?
2/5/2020 19:52 SusanaVA: Yes. I was born there. Are you?
2/5/2020 19:52 MarcusAurelius1938: Sì, soy argentino. Vivo in Buenos Aires.
2/5/2020 19:53 SusanaVA: Yo vivìa en Buenos Aires hasta que tenìa cinco años.
2/5/2020 19:53 MarcusAurelius1938: Y despues?
2/5/2020 19:53 SusanaVA: Now I'm in the US. Why?
2/5/2020 19:53 MarcusAurelius1938:I was just curious. I didn't mean to be too forward.
Clarice's eyes close. There were plenty of chat logs from then on, for a couple of months. Most of them were simply small talk. MarcusAurelius1938 would ask her how her day went, what was new with her, and exactly the sort of thing you would expect an internet friend to ask about. The sort of thing that would have allayed any suspicions Susana might've had. He didn't tell her he was her father; he was just an online friend who asked about her day.
For a moment she notices that both father and daughter punctuated correctly. That is something Susana is odd about. She's always done that. Clarice did it as well; the school she attended at the Montana orphanage had been as picky about that as anything else. She's always thought that had come from her. Seeing Dr. Lecter's penchant for proper grammar and punctuation in this online environment bothers her: she didn't need to be reminded of his tie to Susana.
Very clever. Clarice has to give him that. He didn't push anything; he passed himself off as simply a Buenos Aires native who liked chatting online. Susana would've thought nothing of it.
Clarice knows better. As she examines the logs, she sees how he carefully bided his time. In the idle chitchat he was able to slowly both gain Susana's confidence and patiently chivvy away for whatever information he could get.
For a while he only talked to her about inconsequentialities. He was slick, Clarice had to give him that. He didn't press her; he let her open up to him little by little. She told him she lived in Virginia with her mother. Great, he knew where I live. At one point she had told him where she went to school, which would've given him a town name.
She finds herself thinking he had done some poking around on his own. The snippets of information that Susana had unthinkingly given him would be enough to pop up quite a bit. He'd managed to get her old home address with nary a problem, and she still wasn't sure how he had done that. Dr. Lecter is exceptionally good at figuring stuff like that out.
The logs are mostly idle chitchat. Combing it is like looking for grains of gold on a beach; there is a lot of worthless sand to comb through. What Susana had done at school that day; pleasant greetings; and lots of babble. Then, on April 7th, two days before the field trip:
4/7/2020 20:12 MarcusAurelius1938: So what sort of field trip is it that you're going on?
4/7/2020 20:12 SusanaVA: It's just a field trip to the FBI.
4/7/2020 20:12 MarcusAurelius1938: I suppose your mother has filled you in already on a lot of that.
4/7/2020 20:13 SusanaVA: Some of it. There'll be all sorts of things we'll see: the crime labs and stuff like that.
4/7/2020 20:13 MarcusAurelius1938: I've heard they have a large DNA database.
4/7/2020 20:14 SusanaVA: They do.
4/7/2020 20:14 MarcusAurelius1938: Perhaps they'll scan your DNA. One never knows. It might be fun to try.
Air hissed from between Clarice's teeth upon reading that. He had put the idea in her head? Un-fucking-believable.
Then, after that fateful day, there was another conversation.
4/10/2020 18:23 MarcusAurelius1938: Hello, Susana. How are you?
4/10/2020 18:23 SusanaVA: I'm all right…it's not a good time right now.
4/10/2020 18:23 MarcusAurelius1938: I'm sorry to hear that. Is something wrong?
4/10/2020 18:24 SusanaVA: Yes…I don't want to talk about it.
4/10/2020 18:25 MarcusAurelius1938: Learned something you didn't expect from the DNA scan, didn't you?
An image of Dr. Lecter arises in Clarice's mind. He was sitting at a computer, just as she was now. His pale face was painted by the monitor's glow. On that face, a cold smile as he enjoyed the bombshell he had set off from five thousand miles away.
Clarice thinks of Dick Sutphen, whose essay on brainwashing she had read in college. Any study of brainwashing has to begin with a study of Christian revivalism in eighteenth century America. Apparently, Jonathan Edwards accidentally discovered the techniques during a religious crusade in 1735 in Northampton, Massachusetts. By inducing guilt and acute apprehension and by increasing the tension, the sinners attending his revival meetings would break down and completely submit. Technically, what Edwards was doing was creating conditions that wipe the brain slate clean so that the mind accepts new programming. He would tell those attending, "You're a sinner! You're destined for Hell!"
Well, Dr. Lecter had sure induced apprehension and increased the tension on his daughter. Had he wiped her brain slate clean and gotten her mind to accept new programming? She sure as shit hopes not, but after all, her daughter had gotten up one day and flown to Cuba instead of going to school.
4/10/2020 18:32 SusanaVA: How did you know that?
4/10/2020 18:32 MarcusAurelius1938: I know a great deal of things, Susana. Tell me, have you ever had your left arm or hand X-rayed?
4/10/2020 18:34 SusanaVA: Why?
4/10/2020 18:34 MarcusAurelius1938: Because almost assuredly the doctors would have commented on it. There would have been extra bones in your hand. You were born with an extra finger, you see; it was removed when you were eighteen months old.
4/10/2020 18:38 SusanaVA: How did you know that? How do you KNOW these things? Who the hell are you?
4/10/2020 18:38 MarcusAurelius1938: I knew about your hand because I was there when the work was done. The best surgeon in Buenos Aires did it. It was important to me that you not suffer the same scar I did; and so far as I know that goal was accomplished. Your scar should be virtually unnoticeable.
4/10/2020 18:44 SusanaVA: you're creeping me out. Have you been spying on me or something?
4/10/2020 18:44 MarcusAurelius1938: Spying on you? Of course not. I'm thousands of miles away.
4/10/2020 18:48 SusanaVA: Then how can you know all this stuff about me?
4/10/2020 18:48 MarcusAurelius1938: I should thought you would have realized it by now.
4/10/2020 18:52 SusanaVA: Are you my father?
4/10/2020 18:52 MarcusAurelius1938: You're much like your mother; you have this odd tendency to miss what's right in front of you sometimes. Yes, Susana, I am your father. And now that you've done the DNA scan, you know who I am.
4/10/2020 18:58 MarcusAurelius1938: I take it you're too stunned to believe this is true, but I assure you it is.
4/10/2020 19:03 SusanaVA: I don't know what to say…
4/10/2020 19:04 MarcusAurelius1938: Most of what you may have heard of me is third-hand, and I assure you there is more. It's fairly obvious that your mother has not told you everything. Come see for yourself, why don't you?
4/10/2020 19:04 SusanaVA: How could I see you? You're on the Ten Most-Wanted List. I saw on the FBI's web site.
4/10/2020 19:05 MarcusAurelius1938: Rather dull, isn't it? It's true that travel to Virginia is not a wise decision for me. But there is much that we can do. If you are interested, then perhaps we can arrange things further. I shall contact you by alternate means shortly.
4/10/2020 19:07 SusanaVA: Well, I'm interested, sure. But how will you do this?
4/10/2020 19:08 MarcusAurelius: Trust me; I know exactly how to do it.
That is it for the logs. Clarice Starling pushes her chair back. This is worse than simply running away; Dr. Lecter has convinced her daughter to flee to him. Now, either she is in Cuba or she is…God only knows where.
"Okay," she says, and looks at Bowman. "Now what?"
Bowman shrugs. "We're working on the Cubans. Standard Cuban immigration law means that tourists have to have three days paid for in a hotel. I'll talk to some guys I know at State. If God loves us, they're enjoying their time in Cuba."
Diplomatic pressure; the careful steps and tempo of the political dance. The Cubans don't hate the US enough to let Hannibal Lecter slip through their fingers, do they? At the least, maybe they will lock him up and demand candy for his return. They have returned other criminals before.
But there is a part of Clarice that says that governments and men in gray suits talking on the phone will not settle this matter. Dr. Lecter has learned to paralyze those systems; law enforcement agencies and governments have offered him not the slightest impediment in all these years of illicit freedom.
No. This will be settled on a smaller scale. The governments of the world are great for pageantry, and occasionally they can do some good, but not in this matter. This matter will be settled between mother, daughter…and father.