Thomas Dover was very, very frightened.

Up until a few days ago, he had been one of the 'Lecter Three' at the National Tattler. He, along with Jason Smithfield and David Jameson, had written stories ascribing any number of murders to Hannibal Lecter. It had been great fun, they were good guys, and they had sold a ton of Tattlers detailing the alleged crimes of Hannibal Lecter in the meantime.

But now, someone had stuck knives in all of Jason Smithfield's major organs in alphabetical order. That same someone had also killed two police officers, taken their patrol car, and grabbed Dave Jameson out of the office. The patrol car had become a gas chamber on wheels. They'd found the cruiser in a parking garage, the two dead cops nearby, and Dave gassed to death in the rear seat.

And that left him.

The Chicago police department was livid, as they were when one of their own went down. But they weren't forgetting him. They had two cops detailed to him. The cops stayed in his apartment with him. They followed him to work. They went with him everywhere he went. Their guns made him feel safer. But still, he was frightened.

He had stayed home from work today, offering to e-mail in his article. He had written a lengthy exposè on the two murders. Two hundred dollars to the right people had earned him a picture of Jason Smithfield tied to his refrigerator with knives and pencils sticking out of him and another of David Jameson's corpse lying in the gas-filled back seat of the cruiser. Neither Jay nor Davey would have minded, he thought. They'd have expected it. But his editors deemed the pictures too gruesome, and so he simply wrote an article detailing every last detail in loving detail.

Unlike his co-workers, Dover had actually done some research into Hannibal Lecter. His filing cabinet contained the results of numerous Freedom of Information requests for Lecter files from the various legal agencies that had dealt with the good doctor. He'd always felt that his Lecter articles were more realistic and genuine.

Dover's interest in Lecter stemmed from putting two and two together. He had grown up in a small town in West Virginia. As a boy, his family had been poor, and so he tended to gravitate to other poor kids to play with. And one of the kids he had played with had been the daughter of the town's night marshal. Clarice had been her name, and it hadn't been until much later – when Buffalo Bill had been killed – that he realized his childhood playmate was none other than Special Agent Clarice Starling of the FBI.

Dover had toyed with the idea of contacting her, but thought she would simply blow him off as a reporter seeking inside access to the FBI. And yes, he had to admit, that had been part of it. But part of him did simply want to reunite with his erstwhile friend. He had tried to head off the Tattler article after the Feliciana Fish Market botch or at least get it toned down, but there was no way that the editors would leave that one alone. And shortly after that, Starling had disappeared, presumably with Lecter.

And now, after all these years, it was all coming back. Dover was good enough to realize that it had to be Lecter-related somehow. That was the only real link between Smithfield, Jameson, and him. Plus, Smithfield's murder had been a copy of Lecter's sixth victim.

So he had gone to ground with his two cops guarding him. And that was where he stayed. The cops were good guys; they assured him that everything was going to be OK. They went and got food or had it delivered without complaint. Of course, they enjoyed his big-screen TV and the premium sports channels that he subscribed too. But he was more than willing to let them enjoy it for his own protection.

As he sat in his computer chair, one of the cops was sprawled out on the couch. He was a large black man named Rodell, and he would have not looked out of place on the defensive line of the Chicago Bears. Detective Rodell glanced over at him.

"Hey, man," he said amiably. "Don't look so worried."

Rodell's walkie-talkie buzzed. Even in the year 2025, police communications equipment still made its users sound robotic and machinelike.

"Sixteen-alpha, report in," came a woman's voice.

Rodell raised a hand. "Hold that thought. I gotta take this." He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and pressed the transmit key on the side. His voice lost its jovial tone and became the businesslike tone of all cops on duty.

"Sixteen-alpha," he said crisply.

"Sixteen-alpha, report FBI personnel en route to your location to interview your subject," the woman replied. "Name is Braxton, Tony."

"FBI personnel on route, ten-four. Do we have an ETA?"

"Estimated twenty minutes, sixteen-alpha."

"ETA twenty minutes, roger."

"That's all, sixteen-alpha."

"Roger. Sixteen-alpha out."

"What does that mean?" asked Thomas Dover.

"FBI's coming to see you," Rodell said jovially.

"So what does that mean?" Dover persisted. He didn't mean to whine, but he was afraid, and he whined.

Detective Rodell was used to this. He didn't mind. He grinned widely.

"Means we'll have to get some more pizza!" He spread his arms wide. "We just got enough for the three of us. Just relax, man. They're those guys out of Quantico who track serial killers. They just wanna talk to you, that's all."

Detective Rodell's partner, Detective Joe Polowski, was off getting the pizza. Rodell caught his partner on the radio and advised him of the incoming fibbie. Polowski laughed and promised to get more pizza. He figured he would be back before or just after the fibbie got there.

"What's a fibbie?" asked Dover.

"A fibbie?" Rodell's handsome, dark features cracked into a wide grin. "You know. Eff Bee Eye. So much more than us lowbrow local police."

The grandfather clock in the corner struck six. Dover flinched. Lately, any loud noise made him flinch. That's what happened when an intelligent and cunning psycho was killing your friends and your name was next on the list.

…

Special Agent Tony Braxton stepped out of the patrol car and glanced up at the apartment building. He turned to the patrolman driving.

"Hey, thanks for the ride," he said. He tried to be as friendly as he could to local cops. Made for better relations.

"No problem. Hey, whatever you can do to help catch that guy, go for it."

The patrolman drove off into Chicago traffic and Agent Braxton took his briefcase and headed into the apartment building. In the lobby, he saw a young woman in a neat pantsuit standing by the elevator. He could tell immediately she was a cop. Part of it was the obvious gun under her jacket; part of it was her bearing. He knew cop, and she was cop.

She didn't disappoint him and flashed a badge. "Agent Braxton?" she asked.

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm Detective Stacy Rodell. You're here to interview Mr. Dover for Behavioral Sciences?"

"Yep."

"We're checking out everyone who gets in or out. Can I see your ID?"

"No problem," Braxton said, and flipped it out. She examined it and nodded. Her hand came away from her jacket. For a moment, Braxton shivered, realizing that if she had doubted it she meant to draw her weapon and shoot him.

"Right this way," she said pleasantly and gestured to the elevator. In the elevator, she punched the button for the tenth floor. She blushed, muttered an expletive, and punched twelve. Braxton grinned.

"So what have you guys figured out about this perp?" she asked as the elevator began its trip up to the twelfth floor.

"The UNSUB? Well, we're looking at a few things. There's some evidence that Lecter ties in somehow."

"Hannibal the Cannibal? Thought he'd be dead by now."

"He may be," Braxton agreed. "Maybe the UNSUB thinks he's acting in Lecter's name or something. It's a tie between both murders. And the one was a copy of Lecter's sixth victim."

"What about the other one?"

"Lecter never used gas, but…," Agent Braxton thought for a moment about the best words to use. "The M.O. isn't like Lecter, and the signature isn't really like him either. Lecter liked to do stuff like make people into high-class stuff. Like the flautist whose sweetbreads he served to the board of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He thought the guy played lousy flute, so he made him into an hors d'oeuvre. The Wound Man killing too. That was trying to make the guy into high art, an old piece of medical history."

"So it's not the same."

"Not exactly, no. It's someone developing their own signature. But there are two Lecter-like parts to it."

"What are those?"

"Well, first off, the planning. Whoever did this spent some time. They know how to plan and how to pull it off. I think they either live in Chicago or spend a lot of time here."

No, you dork, I just tipped the bellboy two hundred dollars and asked him for a parking garage that didn't have cameras, Susana Alvarez Lecter thought. He thought I was a call girl looking to please a kinky client who wanted to do it in a garage.

"What's the other?"

"Enjoyment of suffering," he said promptly. "There doesn't seem to be any trophy-taking, although the police officers were missing their badges and guns, from what I understand, as well as the uniform missing from Officer Tyler. But whoever did this sat there, up close, and stabbed Smithfield multiple times, over and over. Heard his groans. Heard him begging to stop. When he died, he died hard. They also found footprints from Tyler's shoes – whoever was wearing them – standing right by the back window of the cruiser they found Jameson in. So whoever did it sat there and watched him die. Watched him beg. Didn't care."

"I see," she said pleasantly. She tried to keep from preening. "What's their motive, do you think?"

"Not sure," Braxton said. "If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they're connected to Lecter. Probably read a lot about him. They see themselves as his guardian, or as a new incarnation of him, something like that."

The elevator doors opened on the tenth floor.

"Actually, I think it's because he was their daddy," Susana said pleasantly, and then acted quickly. She didn't know if Braxton was armed or not, and she didn't want this to become a gunfight anyway. She grabbed his arm, shifted her weight, and threw him out of the elevator as neat as you please. Braxton wasn't expecting it and went flying into the hallway wall. Susana pursued him and grabbed the Harpy from where it was clipped to her jacket pocket. With a firm click, the blade appeared in her hand like a malevolent sixth finger.

"What the hell—" Agent Braxton got out, and then she was on him. He tried to get one hand up to protect himself. Unfortunately, his reaction was instinctual. Susana knew exactly what she wanted to do, and planned to go in deep to the side and slash his neck. As usual, reason won out over instinct. Braxton's carotid artery was neatly severed.

Susana finished the job with another whack, and then dragged him down the hall. The maintenance staff maintained a closet on each floor with cleaning supplies, and she stopped at the tenth-floor hall closet. It was locked, but that was OK. Clarice Starling had been a tech agent once, and she had taught her daughter how to pick locks among other things. Susana had begun by learning to pick the lock on the cupboard in which her mother kept the sweets when she was six. After fifteen years of practice, the cheap spring lock on the hall closet held her back no longer than if she had a key. She popped it open and stuffed Braxton's body inside. They'd find him, but not until tomorrow.

She had visited this floor before and hidden something for herself here. She grabbed it now: a plastic bag containing another suit. The one she had on now had a large stain of blood across the jacket, pants and blouse. She changed quickly, making sure to get all the stuff off her belt too.

Susana was only able to plan this because she had the walkie-talkie she had taken from the female officer whose uniform and car she had borrowed. With it, she was able to eventually figure out where Dover had been stashed and how she could get up there. She had figured that eventually her mother's erstwhile employer would be called into play; it was just a matter of intercepting the guy en route and making plans to get in. Since she was able to listen in on the Chicago PD's transmissions, it was easy. Once she'd heard the local precinct discussing it on the radio, she simply had headed over to Dover's apartment building and waited.

Once she was changed, she took Braxton's briefcase and searched him for ID and a weapon. She found both. She closed the hall closet door and sat down. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and opened the briefcase.

There were case files and a few paperback books in there. Susana didn't want the paperbacks, so she threw them down the garbage chute. By carefully moving things around, she was able to get the plastic bag containing her dirty clothes wedged in where it would not be immediately visible. She slid his holster onto her belt on her right hip. She glanced at herself in the hallway mirror and held her hands above the butts of the two weapons as if she was a cowboy.

Back to work, she didn't have much time. She carefully took his ID card out of the leather case. Then, from her jacket pocket, she took a picture of herself cut to the right size, a laminate-it-yourself kit consisting of two pieces of clear plastic that stuck together, and a pair of scissors. Lining up her picture over Braxton's took only a moment. She put the laminating sheets of plastic over the whole thing, pressed it together, and put it back in the card. She decided to try and sneak this back through Customs. Her mother might find it amusing.

Susana knew that the card would not stand up to serious examination, but she didn't think there would be a serious examination. The cop was expecting an FBI agent; he would get one. She glanced at herself in the mirror and brushed at her hair with her hands. She headed back to the elevator.

Two floors up. Showtime. She knocked on the door and waited. A mammoth black man opened the door and eyed her carefully.

"Detective Rodell?" she asked. He nodded. She flashed her ID. "Special Agent Tonia Braxton."

He looked at her. "Oh. They said Tony on the radio."

"Oh." She looked slightly embarassed. "Happens all the time. But you have a witness in there for me."

"OK," he agreed and opened the door wide. Susana changed her plans quickly; this guy was just too damn big to go after with the Harpy. She couldn't be sure the first shot would take him down, and if not, then he would just pick her up and break her in two. No, although she didn't like it, she had no real choice other than to use the gun.

Even so, the gun was untraceable to her anyway. And now was the time to strike. His back was turned as he headed into the apartment, clearing the way for her. She shifted her briefcase to her other hand and drew her weapon. A touch of her mother's morals rose up in her, protesting that it was hardly sporting to kill a man from behind who believed her to be an ally. She answered that spark by pointing out that it wasn't sporting to be captured, or killed, either.

She put the gun up against the back of his head and pulled the trigger once. The muzzle was pressed into his skin and there was very little sound. Detective Rodell did not feel any real pain. One moment, he was thinking about the cute FBI agent who needed to interview Dover; the next moment, a 9mm slug penetrated the back of his skull. It was a hollow-point slug and when it contacted the soft material of his brain, it mushroomed. It tore apart Rodell's thoughts, dreams, and memories in a heartbeat. He was brain dead before he hit the floor.

When he did, it made an awful thump. She saw a scared-looking older man looking at her.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Oh my God, he fell. Come help me with him," Susana ordered.

"Should I call 911?" he asked querulously.

"No. Get over here and help."

When Thomas Dover did, she had to roll her eyes. Some people were so predictable. If she'd told him to shoot himself and save her the trouble, would he have? She could have done all this by phone maybe, just call each of them and ask them to kill themselves for her, please.

But that wouldn't have been as much fun. He ran over and stared at the back of Rodell's head, which was bleeding.

"He's bleeding," bleated Dover.

"So are you," Susana said, and pistol-whipped him with the barrel of the 9mm. She felt his nose break. It was very satisfying. Idly, she wondered if her mother or her father had ever pistol-whipped anyone. She decided her mom probably had, and turned her attentions back to her current victim.

Dover had rolled over on his side, unbelieving. Susana stood up and walked over to him. Her maroon eyes reflected the light in red points down at him. A beautiful, evil young goddess of death.

"You're the last of the scribblers," she said tonelessly. "The last of the ones who told those lies about my papa."

"What lies? What are you talking about?" His tone was nasal and thick with blood.

"I'm Susana Lecter," she explained. "Smithfield, Jameson and you told lies about my papa. They paid the price. Now it's your turn."

Dover lay on the floor, stunned. His nose was a bright flare of fire and pain. But the girl's revelation stunned him more.

"No, wait," he said. "I knew your mom."

Susana chuckled. She felt in a rather Lecter-ish mood, and decided that Dover's end would be more as her father would have done. "My mother?"

"Yes," rasped Dover. "If your dad is Hannibal Lecter, your mom must be Clarice Starling."

Susana considered and lowered the gun. Dover saw he had her interest and plunged on.

"I grew up in West Virginia," he said. "I was friend with your mom when we were kids."

"Maybe you've done some research," she challenged, "but it won't save you."

"It's true!" He gagged. "Your grandpa was John Starling. He was a night marshal."

"Right so far."

Thomas Dover wasn't a stupid man, and he knew that Detective Polowski was returning with pizza, any minute now. If he could only keep this young monster busy long enough.

"They had a white house. On Jackson street. He used to pick up Sno Balls for her."

Susana decided that he wasn't lying. She still planned to kill him, but she might let him live a few minutes longer.

"Keep going," she said. Dover brightened. A knock came at the door. His rescuer was here.

Unfortunately for Thomas Dover, Susana knew exactly who it was at the door. She hid her gun behind her back and threw the door open to reveal Detective Joe Polowski. He held a pizza box in his hands. From a

"Hi," she said. "Tonia Braxton, FBI."

He started to say hello, then saw the prone body of his partner. "What the hell?"

Most cops learn early on to keep their gun hand free. Susana had learned pistolcraft from her mother, who had drilled this into her. Detective Polowski would serve as a reminder of why for future generations of Chicago police..

To his credit, he tried. He dropped the pizza box almost immediately and went for his gun. But the fastest gunslinger in the world could not outdraw a gun already out and aimed at him. Susana pumped a bullet into his gut. When he fell, she ran up to him and fired another bullet into his head.

She hauled him into the apartment and closed and locked the door. Dover was curled up, whimpering, in a ball on the carpet. His nose was still bleeding and a dark pool was beginning to form on the carpet. Too bad, she thought. The carpet was decent. But it was not going to be saved now. Neither was he.

"Sorry you were so rudely interrupted. C'mon," she said, and got him up on his knees. She herded him into the kitchen. He cowered, expecting to die as Smithfield had.

Susana had other plans. She opened up the cupboards below his sink and threw all the cleaning chemicals out with her foot. Then she pinned his wrist down, slapped a handcuff on it, and attached the other cuff to the drainpipe.

"Now don't you move, and don't you make a sound. Or what I'll do will make your nose feel like a mother's kisses," she threatened.

Dover whimpered something about not wanting to die. Susana decided he was sufficiently cowed and strode down his hallway to his bedroom. There, she took the sheets off the bed. She had a wonderful idea as a tribute to her father's work. Memphis. One of his finest works.

It was no real choice which cop was going up on the wall. Detective Rodell went about three hundred pounds. Detective Polowski was a hundred pounds lighter – no featherweight, but she could get him where she wanted him. Conveniently, there was a beam crossing the cathedral ceiling that would work to anchor him to.

She borrowed Dover's computer chair to move Rodell. She pondered where to place him for the most realism, but realized that there was no way she could pass for Rodell. Wrong gender, wrong race, and wrong body size. She decided that Rodell would go where Pembry actually had gone.

Thank God, no one was in the hallway. Most tenants were at work. Opening the elevator doors when the elevator itself was not at her floor was not easy, but Susana managed it with the aid of a gun barrel. Rodell's body made a horrible thud when she dropped it down the shaft and it hit the car.

She took a moment to admire her handiwork where she had affixed Detective Polowski with the bedsheet draped under him like the wings of a moth. Just as her father had done to a Memphis police officer so many years ago. But Dover himself did not fit into this scenario. It took a few minutes for her to set up his scenario.

She checked on him and discovered he had only taken a roll of paper towels in an attempt to clean up the blood from his nose. She rolled him over on his back and cuffed his hands behind his back. Pulling him to his feet, she directed him over to the computer chair. She dropped him into it. He seemed to have lapsed into a narcotized funk of fear and pain. That was fine. Easier to manage that way.

In Dover's bedroom, she had discovered a fifty-foot length of rope. She didn't know what he used it for and frankly didn't want to know. But it came in awfully handy. While Dover had been cuffed to his plumbing, she had tied a noose in it and dragged it out onto Dover's balcony.

"What are you doing?" he muttered as she rolled him towards the sliding glass door of the balcony.

"Don't worry about it," she said smoothly. "It'll all be over in a minute or two."

Out on the balcony, he stirred. There was a three-foot wall at the edge, designed to keep the unwary from falling over the balcony and splattering themselves all over the street below.

"I'll tell my mama you said hello," she said sweetly. She grabbed the noose and dropped it over his head, tightening it with a quick jerk.

His eyes snapped open at that. "What are you doing?" he cried.

Susana grabbed the Harpy and snapped it out. A quick slash up Dover's body, and then she slipped around him. Her hands grabbed him at the upper arm and pulled him out of the chair. Then she kicked it away and threw Dover over the side.

Thomas Dover plummeted a heartstopping distance. When the rope finally snapped taut, his neck broke with a audible crack and his bowels fell out. His viscera dripped vile fluids onto the sidewalk below. Horrified passersby stopped and stared. The body swayed slowly, bumping against the wall of the building.

On the balcony, Susana took only a moment to watch him hit the end of the rope. She was somewhat disappointed that he did not actually dance on air. Still, the effect of disembowelment was as impressive as her father had led her to believe.

Escape was simple. Everyone was looking at the swaying body. It was a simple matter to get to the stairs. She took them two at a time and slipped into the gathering crowd outside. By the time the first units had pulled up to the building and the police went in to discover the remaining grisly surprise, Susana was in her rental car and on her way to the airport.