Before they had a chance to enter, an older man in surgical scrubs came out. He frowned strenuously at them.

"Agent Crawford, are you sending in another agent?"

Crawford smiled tightly. "Yes, doctor. This is Agent Starling, I'd like her to have a talk-"

The doctor cut him off. "Agent Crawford, you have already sent in three agents to interrogate Miss Lander. Now we try to be cooperative, but enough's enough. She's been through a lot, and I don't need your goons making my patient hysterical."

Starling read his name off the ID clipped to the pocket of his scrubs. "Dr. Rhodes, I'm sure you mean only the best for your patient, but there's been a crime committed here."

The doctor focused his attention on her. "And who would you be?"

"Clarice Starling. FBI." She flashed her credentials. The doctor was not impressed. "I flew in just to talk with Miss Lander."

"Well, Agent Starling, I'm sure you think you're helping, but let's not lose sight of something here. This guy comes in," he jabbed a finger, "and has one of our patients screaming and hysterical inside of five minutes. You've had three chances. She doesn't want to talk to you."

"She hasn't said that," Starling pointed out.

"Yeah, well, this is a hospital. We take care of people here when they can't take care of themselves. And that includes protecting them from overbearing cops."

"Dr. Rhodes, look. I'm not here to make life harder on her…well, than it has been already. I just want the chance to talk to her for a little bit. Now I promise you, if she gets stressed out and wants me to leave, I'll leave." She turned to Crawford. "Do you have the address for the local U.S. attorney's office?"

Crawford nodded, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a card. He gave it to the angry physician.

"You're more than welcome to call that number," Starling said, "but all I want to do is get a statement. I won't get her worked up. I promise."

"That's what the last three said."

"Or," Starling continued, "I can call that number myself and get a warrant on you for obstruction of justice, arrest you, and have you taken downtown. As a federal crime, that is punishable by fines and imprisonment."

Dr. Rhodes gawped openly at her.

"You can't do that."

"I most certainly can, sir," she said. "Now, again, I'll go real easy and nice, I won't get her worked up, and if she does, I'll leave her be, but I am going to go in there."

The doctor glared icily at her. "All right then. Go. But so help me God, if anything happens, I'll have an official complaint in on you."

Starling kept her pleasant smile on while she opened the door and entered. Erin Lander's room was private. She was sitting up in bed. Her eyes were on Starling's the minute she came through the door. Starling sized her up.

Erin was small, a few inches shorter than Starling, although it was hard to tell while she was in bed. Her color looked good, but she seemed apprehensive when Starling came in. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. An IV ran into the back of her hand. She didn't seem drugged – Starling had dealt with people under the influence of psychotropics before, and Erin's eyes were too alert and aware.

Starling smiled. It felt a bit more real than the rictus she had summoned with the doctor.

"Hi," she said.

"Who are you?" Erin asked.

"My name's Clarice Starling," she answered. "I'm with the FBI." She saw Erin flinch a bit. Regulation mandated she needed to flash her ID, but she decided not to bother for now.

"What do you want?" Erin asked guardedly.

"Just to ask you a few questions," Starling replied. She smiled and opened her hands. "Now I understand there were a couple of problems before, and I just want to say, I'm not going to try to freak you out. If you don't want to answer my questions, that's OK."

"You can ask," Erin said warily.

"Okay, great," Starling said, still smiling. "I do need to say a few legal things first. First off, you have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you without cost."

"The other agents said that already," Erin said, bored.

"Okay. Okay. I just need to make sure, that's all."

"So what questions did you have?" Erin asked.

Starling took out the tape recorder. "Mind if I tape this?"

Erin shook her head.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Erin shrugged. "Some guy kidnapped me and put new kidneys in me."

"Who was that?"

"Dr.Lawson."

"Did you know his first name?"

"I think it's Robert."

Slowly but surely, Starling brought out the story of what had transpired in that country house over the past week. It was difficult going, as the role of perky friend did not come easily to her. She did manage to get the girl talking and kept her talking. She couldn't help but feel sorry for Erin. While her captivity had been more comfortable than that of Jame Gumb's victims, it was still captivity. She noticed that Erin seemed to be of two minds on Dr. Lawson himself: she was clearly frightened of him on one level, but seemed to have become comfortable with him.

Erin was less forthcoming on why this had happened to her or why she had gotten so hysterical about Jack Crawford's prior attempt to question her. When Starling mentioned his name, Erin cringed and almost burst into tears. Starling noted this on her pad and wondered what had happened; it was almost as if she knew Crawford personally. It took several minutes of soothing and assuring her that it was OK before questioning could resume. Erin vociferously denied having any knowledge of Dr. Lawson's plans and said that she had not even told him she needed dialysis.

Satisfied, Starling moved on. "Now when they found you, you were in a strapless dress. Was that yours?"

Erin shook her head. "Dr. Lawson gave that to me. He wanted to have a gourmet dinner with me the night he…discharged me."

"A gourmet dinner?"

"Yeah. Something French. Wait. Sautés reins, he said."

The words gourmet dinner clanged in Starling's mind. She wrote them down on her pad, along with the words sautés reins.

"Was he into gourmet food?"

"Yes. That's how he met me, I guess. At the coffee bar. It's all lah-dee- dah, we serve gourmet coffee. And he was into classical music and literature too."

An uneasy feeling crept into Starling's stomach.

"Did he ever say his name was anything other than Robert Lawson?"

"No," Erin said, looking strangely at her.

"And according to your description, he had a beard and glasses?"

"Yes." Then, in a more suspicious voice, "Why? Do you think I'm lying?"

"No," Starling said. "Just making sure."

She continued the questioning for a few more minutes, then thanked Erin for her time and said she had done fine. Outside, she searched for and found Crawford.

"OK," she said. "I got a statement. A good one."

Crawford smiled. "I knew I could count on you, Starling."

Starling preened under the praise. "I do have a couple things, though. First off, I need to know what the dish sautes reins is."

"Sounds French."

"I want to see this coffee bar, and talk with the manager."

"See it? Sure. We have a statement from the manager. He didn't know the Lawson guy personally. Seems Lawson had only buzzed in for the past couple of weeks before he pulled his little snatch 'n grab."

"Let me do a few things," Starling said. "Is there a hotel room here or something?"

"Yeah, you should have a reservation."

Starling promised to meet him at five, and went out to do some research. She called the FBI and discovered that a search for doctors named Robert Lawson was already running. She dropped by the espresso bar where Erin Lander worked and spoke briefly with the manager there. He seemed a nice guy, but told her to refer to the statement he had given already. At the hotel, she commandeered Agent Witt's laptop, plugged it into the hotel's LAN, and fired up a web browser. She navigated to a translation website and typed in the words sautes reins. It took her a few tries to get it spelled right, since she was only operating off a phonetic spelling and did not know how to put in an accent mark. She had to translate from French to English a few times. Finally, however, it took, and Starling stared at the screen in horror, her hands clapped over her mouth.

In the bottom box, it had the phrase she had put in: sautés reins. In the top box was the translation. Starling was horrified. Horrified at the words, and horrified because a faint suspicion was becoming clearer. She stared for several moments on the word in the top box.

Sauteed kidneys.

Dr. Lawson had given Erin new kidneys. He had dressed her up in a fancy gown, and offered her a gourmet dinner. That happened to consist of exactly what he had taken from her.

Despite the horror, Starling was too good an investigator to not make the connection.

Lawson had met Erin in a gourmet coffeehouse. Lawson liked gourmet food, fine wine, literature, and classical music. Lawson wasn't a surgeon by trade, but was obviously medically trained. Lawson knew a great deal about psychotropic drugs – the blood tests on Erin had shown a great variety of hypnotics and sedatives. Lawson had obviously killed the donor, since there was no report of a kidney theft from any hospital anywhere, which meant killing didn't bother him. On their last night together, Lawson had fed her a gourmet meal, which Starling believed consisted of Erin's original kidneys.

There was only one man Starling knew of who fit that profile.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter.