Part III
The Revelation
Clarice Starling sat at the rough wooden table. She was back inside the same interrogation room she had been taken to right after her arrest. The FBI agents had shifted her around to avoid the media, but had finally given up and allowed the media to do their worst.
The table, however, was different. It was a crude replacement for the fine wooden table, which had had one of its legs kicked out by an over-frustrated interrogator. Starling was dressed in tired blue prison fatigues, they were clean, for they had been changed the very morning. She half-smiled. The interrogators were more considerate than she had remembered. Starling glanced up at the huge one-way mirror on the wall. She sensed rather than saw the four men behind the silver glass. They were angry. Pity she couldn't hear them. She knew they were talking about her.
"With all due respect, Mr. Pearsall, what sort of ass is the director to permit drug intervention? Do you know what the media will do when they find out?"
"Regardless, they are direct orders from the director, who is more powerful than the media any day."
"You would be the last person I expected to say that, Pearsall."
Another agent spoke then. "Again, we have no proof of mental illness."
Pearsall rounded on the man and spoke in a slow, taunting voice. "She danced off into the sunset with Hannibal Lecter. What more proof of mental disorder do you need?"
"Proof that what you just said is true."
"That is what I'm going to get for you."
A minute later, the door to the interrogation room burst open and Starling saw the four men walk in with equally grim expressions on their faces. Pearsall cleared his throat as he read the forged official court order for the drug out loud and then laid it in front of Starling to examine.
Starling barely glanced at the paper. She regarded Pearsall with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. "White-out and a photocopier, am I right?"
Pearsall shifted nervously. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
Starling continued as if she hadn't heard. "A particularly nice job, too. It would have fooled me had you not left this bit of the original signature intact." She pointed to a smudge on the paper.
Pearsall went slightly pale and hid his discomfort by busying himself with preparing the needle. Two agents went to either side of Starling, clearly expecting her to struggle. Pearsall walked toward Starling with the prepared needle. His hand was shaking slightly.
"If you like, I can inject myself. Then you won't be blamed for breaking the law."
Pearsall's eyes flared and he said nothing, but slid the needle into Starling's arm. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she went into a trance.
"What does the law mean to you anymore?" Pearsall said while she could not hear. He and the other officers waited for a few moments for the drug to take full effect. He knew when it would happen. There: the sound of her breathing changes ever so slightly from unconsciousness to unnatural self-control.
Pearsall kneeled in front of Starling and looked into her half-open eyes. "Clarice Starling, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Can you count backwards from fifty for me?"
"Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight..."
"What comes after forty-eight?"
No response.
"Clarice?"
So tired. So careless. She should...just...go to sleep. In a quiet but clear voice. "Thirty, nineteen..."
Pearsall removed a hand-held recorder from his jacket and placed it on the table. He took a deep breath. "Clarice, according to FBI records, you disappeared from service five years ago. Your .45 Colt was found at Muskrat Farm, the same night that Dr. Lecter killed Mason Verger and several farmers at the same location."
Starling mumbled something.
"I'm sorry?"
"That's a lie. You never reported me missing from active duty. I was just another missing person, whose picture you mail on the little blue and white card people try to ignore in their mail."
"Clarice, I understand that you were bitter about being suspended, but it was backed up by solid proof and official statements from your superiors. And believe me, the FBI did everything in their power to find you afterwards."
"Solid proof? You drove Jack Crawford away and let a screwball such as Krendler feed you stories. Someone with a brain the size of a gnat and so bland that Hannibal ---." Starling stopped talking suddenly, her face frozen in shock. Something was wrong. The halls of her mind had darkened and she was lost.
Pearsall got to his feet and leaned closer to her face. "WHAT?!! What did you just say about Agent Krendler? Let me tell you he disappeared from duty about the same time as you. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?!"
Starling's eyes were dancing in her skull. Confusion set into her brain. The familiar halls of her memory palace were being twisted out of the shape. The structure spinning into a blur.
A stranger was in her palace. A dark shadow. Starling froze stiff as the shadow melted into her. The shadow made her reach for the knob of a door. A door she had closed. Her arm jerked up and down like a robot as she fought the shadow. She couldn't let herself open that door. Couldn't.
In the real world, Pearsall stared as Starling trembled. He managed to catch a few words of what she was saying.
"Krendler...took wrong helicopter...parsley and thyme...D below middle C...Château d'Yquem...golden liquid...golden heaven..."
Pearsall leaned closer to Starling. "Clarice, were you with Lecter these past five years?"
"His name is Hannibal." Starling managed to keep her voice calm.
"Fine," Pearsall hissed, "Hannibal is responsible for the deaths of over twenty people."
"No, he didn't kill those people at Muskrat Farm. It was...Marghaa..." Starling gagged on her own words.
The shadow was tearing at the door. It sent her nails gouging deep into the wood, not noticing the blood fountaining from the fingers. Cracks had already appeared, but Starling couldn't let it happen. Her head smashing against the stubborn woodwork. Screaming in agony. The shadow driving her to the edge of her endurance.
The interrogation room was in pandemonium. Pearsall roaring orders that the officers keep still as Starling went into convulsions.
"Pearsall, she'll die if she keeps fighting that drug!"
"She won't. She can't." Pearsall bent toward Starling's face again. "Where is he, Starling? Where is Hannibal Lecter?"
More convulsions.
"I swear to you, if you do not tell me, I have plenty more of this stuff to give. Now, WHERE IS HE?"
Starling slumped in the chair and whispered. "I don't know. We were in Buenos Aires for five years. If one of us was caught, the other would go into hiding."
She was about to tell them everything. The boars, the dinner, the trip, everything... The shadow had ripped the door in half and the room was revealed. But then, instead of ransacking the room, the shadow began to dissolve. As night dissolves into dawn, the shadow changed to nothingness.
Starling dropped to the floor, the hallways of her memory palace slowly fading into darkness. She laid her face down, the bloodstained white marble cool on her face.
Clarice Starling sat limply in the chair, her head lolling forward. Pearsall wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and turned to face the officers. It was hard not to read the expressions of murder in their faces.
"We have the information we need to put her away. Do you have all of this on videotape?"
"Yes."
"Get rid of it. An edited recording will do well enough." Pearsall scooped the recorder back into his jacket.
"This whole thing was uncalled for, Pearsall."
"It was the only way," Pearsall snapped.
"Wrong, it was the easy way." Starling had recovered completely from the drug and had set glittering eyes on Pearsall. "Were you afraid for your career, Agent? You think you made the right choice? Are you scared now that all the morals you have fought so long for are now garbage?"
Pearsall whirled on Starling, pushing aside his surprise at her quick recovery. "You've told me what I need to know. Now, with no drug intervention, tell me, why?"
Starling sat up straight in the chair and spat words at Pearsall like poison. "Fidelity, bravery, and integrity are things of the past. The FBI has become no more than a gang of career-climbers, all aching for the chance to steal your victories, reputation, and career. I bring Buffalo Bill to justice, I am demoted. I find more information on Hannibal Lecter than any of you could hope to know, I get suspended. I disappear from service, nobody cares. All for what? A promotion for one of your men, perhaps? I spent all my life chasing a dead-end career while shoving emotions to the side. Hannibal has never deserted me. He has never failed to keep his promises. He is the only person who has ever done so. He set me free. Now you ask me why I happened? You are the answer, Agent, you and this entire suffocating cocoon around you."
There was silence for a whole minute in the interrogation room as Pearsall stared furiously at Starling, Starling maddeningly calm. The silence was broken by the shrill chirping of a cell phone.
It was Pearsall's.
"What?" he snarled into the phone. His face contorted. "Can it wait? I'm busy at the moment...All right, this better be worth my time." He turned the phone off. "Put her in a holding cell until I get back." And then he was gone.
* * *
Pearsall burst through the doors of the local police station. There was a huge commotion going on in the back of the room.
"What is this?" he said as he made his way to the fight.
The pounding of fists stopped as Pearsall made his appearance. The policemen in the middle of the mob moved to the sides except two officers holding what seemed to be the source of the trouble.
It was a man with heavy tattoos over his arms and a face that would scare his own mother. He had ice-blue eyes and several days stubble on his jaw.
Pearsall stepped toward him. "Do I know you? Why do you want to talk to me?"
"You're holding Clarice Starling," he hissed.
"Whoever you are, she is none of your concern."
"Don't you know who I am? Who we are? The Trey-Eight Crips want her head on a platter for what she did to Evelda Drumgo."
Pearsall rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "This is insane," he muttered under his breath.
"I hope you know that this isn't exactly the best way to get what you want."
The Crip spat on the ground. "Damn you cops. I'm the messenger. Piss me off and the entire gang will be after your blood."
"Oh, so you waited five years to display your strength. I think our forces are more than a match for you."
"I wouldn't be sure," said the Crip with a sneer. "It seemed that the time you took Evelda, we took down two of yours. Cops die as easy as anyone."
Pearsall's face twisted. "Take him away," he snapped.
He turned his back.
In a flash, before anyone could move. The Crip had crossed the space between him and Pearsall. Pearsall felt his head slam against the ground. One hand went around his throat and the other dug into the flesh below his right eye.
The Crip roaring and tearing away at his face, Pearsall rendered helpless by shock, screaming, shouts and gunshots from the policemen, a terrible pain in Pearsall's skull, his right eye was gone.
Sounds of blows falling on the Crip. Crip's blood dripping on Pearsall's face. Pearsall was beyond feeling. As the gunshot went off, he sunk into deep blackness, unaware of the blood and particles of brain matter that covered his savaged face.
The Revelation
Clarice Starling sat at the rough wooden table. She was back inside the same interrogation room she had been taken to right after her arrest. The FBI agents had shifted her around to avoid the media, but had finally given up and allowed the media to do their worst.
The table, however, was different. It was a crude replacement for the fine wooden table, which had had one of its legs kicked out by an over-frustrated interrogator. Starling was dressed in tired blue prison fatigues, they were clean, for they had been changed the very morning. She half-smiled. The interrogators were more considerate than she had remembered. Starling glanced up at the huge one-way mirror on the wall. She sensed rather than saw the four men behind the silver glass. They were angry. Pity she couldn't hear them. She knew they were talking about her.
"With all due respect, Mr. Pearsall, what sort of ass is the director to permit drug intervention? Do you know what the media will do when they find out?"
"Regardless, they are direct orders from the director, who is more powerful than the media any day."
"You would be the last person I expected to say that, Pearsall."
Another agent spoke then. "Again, we have no proof of mental illness."
Pearsall rounded on the man and spoke in a slow, taunting voice. "She danced off into the sunset with Hannibal Lecter. What more proof of mental disorder do you need?"
"Proof that what you just said is true."
"That is what I'm going to get for you."
A minute later, the door to the interrogation room burst open and Starling saw the four men walk in with equally grim expressions on their faces. Pearsall cleared his throat as he read the forged official court order for the drug out loud and then laid it in front of Starling to examine.
Starling barely glanced at the paper. She regarded Pearsall with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. "White-out and a photocopier, am I right?"
Pearsall shifted nervously. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
Starling continued as if she hadn't heard. "A particularly nice job, too. It would have fooled me had you not left this bit of the original signature intact." She pointed to a smudge on the paper.
Pearsall went slightly pale and hid his discomfort by busying himself with preparing the needle. Two agents went to either side of Starling, clearly expecting her to struggle. Pearsall walked toward Starling with the prepared needle. His hand was shaking slightly.
"If you like, I can inject myself. Then you won't be blamed for breaking the law."
Pearsall's eyes flared and he said nothing, but slid the needle into Starling's arm. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she went into a trance.
"What does the law mean to you anymore?" Pearsall said while she could not hear. He and the other officers waited for a few moments for the drug to take full effect. He knew when it would happen. There: the sound of her breathing changes ever so slightly from unconsciousness to unnatural self-control.
Pearsall kneeled in front of Starling and looked into her half-open eyes. "Clarice Starling, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Can you count backwards from fifty for me?"
"Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight..."
"What comes after forty-eight?"
No response.
"Clarice?"
So tired. So careless. She should...just...go to sleep. In a quiet but clear voice. "Thirty, nineteen..."
Pearsall removed a hand-held recorder from his jacket and placed it on the table. He took a deep breath. "Clarice, according to FBI records, you disappeared from service five years ago. Your .45 Colt was found at Muskrat Farm, the same night that Dr. Lecter killed Mason Verger and several farmers at the same location."
Starling mumbled something.
"I'm sorry?"
"That's a lie. You never reported me missing from active duty. I was just another missing person, whose picture you mail on the little blue and white card people try to ignore in their mail."
"Clarice, I understand that you were bitter about being suspended, but it was backed up by solid proof and official statements from your superiors. And believe me, the FBI did everything in their power to find you afterwards."
"Solid proof? You drove Jack Crawford away and let a screwball such as Krendler feed you stories. Someone with a brain the size of a gnat and so bland that Hannibal ---." Starling stopped talking suddenly, her face frozen in shock. Something was wrong. The halls of her mind had darkened and she was lost.
Pearsall got to his feet and leaned closer to her face. "WHAT?!! What did you just say about Agent Krendler? Let me tell you he disappeared from duty about the same time as you. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?!"
Starling's eyes were dancing in her skull. Confusion set into her brain. The familiar halls of her memory palace were being twisted out of the shape. The structure spinning into a blur.
A stranger was in her palace. A dark shadow. Starling froze stiff as the shadow melted into her. The shadow made her reach for the knob of a door. A door she had closed. Her arm jerked up and down like a robot as she fought the shadow. She couldn't let herself open that door. Couldn't.
In the real world, Pearsall stared as Starling trembled. He managed to catch a few words of what she was saying.
"Krendler...took wrong helicopter...parsley and thyme...D below middle C...Château d'Yquem...golden liquid...golden heaven..."
Pearsall leaned closer to Starling. "Clarice, were you with Lecter these past five years?"
"His name is Hannibal." Starling managed to keep her voice calm.
"Fine," Pearsall hissed, "Hannibal is responsible for the deaths of over twenty people."
"No, he didn't kill those people at Muskrat Farm. It was...Marghaa..." Starling gagged on her own words.
The shadow was tearing at the door. It sent her nails gouging deep into the wood, not noticing the blood fountaining from the fingers. Cracks had already appeared, but Starling couldn't let it happen. Her head smashing against the stubborn woodwork. Screaming in agony. The shadow driving her to the edge of her endurance.
The interrogation room was in pandemonium. Pearsall roaring orders that the officers keep still as Starling went into convulsions.
"Pearsall, she'll die if she keeps fighting that drug!"
"She won't. She can't." Pearsall bent toward Starling's face again. "Where is he, Starling? Where is Hannibal Lecter?"
More convulsions.
"I swear to you, if you do not tell me, I have plenty more of this stuff to give. Now, WHERE IS HE?"
Starling slumped in the chair and whispered. "I don't know. We were in Buenos Aires for five years. If one of us was caught, the other would go into hiding."
She was about to tell them everything. The boars, the dinner, the trip, everything... The shadow had ripped the door in half and the room was revealed. But then, instead of ransacking the room, the shadow began to dissolve. As night dissolves into dawn, the shadow changed to nothingness.
Starling dropped to the floor, the hallways of her memory palace slowly fading into darkness. She laid her face down, the bloodstained white marble cool on her face.
Clarice Starling sat limply in the chair, her head lolling forward. Pearsall wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and turned to face the officers. It was hard not to read the expressions of murder in their faces.
"We have the information we need to put her away. Do you have all of this on videotape?"
"Yes."
"Get rid of it. An edited recording will do well enough." Pearsall scooped the recorder back into his jacket.
"This whole thing was uncalled for, Pearsall."
"It was the only way," Pearsall snapped.
"Wrong, it was the easy way." Starling had recovered completely from the drug and had set glittering eyes on Pearsall. "Were you afraid for your career, Agent? You think you made the right choice? Are you scared now that all the morals you have fought so long for are now garbage?"
Pearsall whirled on Starling, pushing aside his surprise at her quick recovery. "You've told me what I need to know. Now, with no drug intervention, tell me, why?"
Starling sat up straight in the chair and spat words at Pearsall like poison. "Fidelity, bravery, and integrity are things of the past. The FBI has become no more than a gang of career-climbers, all aching for the chance to steal your victories, reputation, and career. I bring Buffalo Bill to justice, I am demoted. I find more information on Hannibal Lecter than any of you could hope to know, I get suspended. I disappear from service, nobody cares. All for what? A promotion for one of your men, perhaps? I spent all my life chasing a dead-end career while shoving emotions to the side. Hannibal has never deserted me. He has never failed to keep his promises. He is the only person who has ever done so. He set me free. Now you ask me why I happened? You are the answer, Agent, you and this entire suffocating cocoon around you."
There was silence for a whole minute in the interrogation room as Pearsall stared furiously at Starling, Starling maddeningly calm. The silence was broken by the shrill chirping of a cell phone.
It was Pearsall's.
"What?" he snarled into the phone. His face contorted. "Can it wait? I'm busy at the moment...All right, this better be worth my time." He turned the phone off. "Put her in a holding cell until I get back." And then he was gone.
* * *
Pearsall burst through the doors of the local police station. There was a huge commotion going on in the back of the room.
"What is this?" he said as he made his way to the fight.
The pounding of fists stopped as Pearsall made his appearance. The policemen in the middle of the mob moved to the sides except two officers holding what seemed to be the source of the trouble.
It was a man with heavy tattoos over his arms and a face that would scare his own mother. He had ice-blue eyes and several days stubble on his jaw.
Pearsall stepped toward him. "Do I know you? Why do you want to talk to me?"
"You're holding Clarice Starling," he hissed.
"Whoever you are, she is none of your concern."
"Don't you know who I am? Who we are? The Trey-Eight Crips want her head on a platter for what she did to Evelda Drumgo."
Pearsall rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "This is insane," he muttered under his breath.
"I hope you know that this isn't exactly the best way to get what you want."
The Crip spat on the ground. "Damn you cops. I'm the messenger. Piss me off and the entire gang will be after your blood."
"Oh, so you waited five years to display your strength. I think our forces are more than a match for you."
"I wouldn't be sure," said the Crip with a sneer. "It seemed that the time you took Evelda, we took down two of yours. Cops die as easy as anyone."
Pearsall's face twisted. "Take him away," he snapped.
He turned his back.
In a flash, before anyone could move. The Crip had crossed the space between him and Pearsall. Pearsall felt his head slam against the ground. One hand went around his throat and the other dug into the flesh below his right eye.
The Crip roaring and tearing away at his face, Pearsall rendered helpless by shock, screaming, shouts and gunshots from the policemen, a terrible pain in Pearsall's skull, his right eye was gone.
Sounds of blows falling on the Crip. Crip's blood dripping on Pearsall's face. Pearsall was beyond feeling. As the gunshot went off, he sunk into deep blackness, unaware of the blood and particles of brain matter that covered his savaged face.