It had been a few days since Susana's disappearance. Clarice had not slept since the FBI had come to the house and had eaten very little. It concerned Dr. Lecter. While he was worried himself about his only daughter, he did not think that self-starvation would accomplish anything to help her. He was pondering means and ways to figure out something that would.
Finally, he made Clarice an offer: if she would eat a full meal and sleep for four hours, then he would discuss ideas with her on what they could do to help their daughter. She had taken him up on it. Now they sat together in the living room, two cups of herbal tea in front of them.
"So what's your big idea?" Clarice asked.
Dr. Lecter sighed. "The strategy is simple. Get the FBI case file. The problem, Clarice, is in tactics, or getting it." He pulled from his mug of tea.
"You should be able to figure out a way to get it," she pointed out. "Considering what you pulled in Memphis."
Dr. Lecter sighed. "That was thirty years ago, Clarice. I'm not as young or as strong as I used to be. Perhaps I should rephrase: we need to get the FBI file without getting caught and without drawing suspicion to ourselves."
Clarice thought for a moment, her blue eyes focused inward.
"Do we need the FBI file? There are newspaper accounts," she said.
Dr. Lecter shook his head. "Tut-tut, Clarice. You should know better. The newspaper accounts will be at best lacking in detail and at worst completely wrong. We need our information from the source."
Clarice shrugged. "I'll get it, then. There's only so many hotels in Buenos Aires." The look on her face told him exactly what her plan was.
"Going in with guns blazing will not get us where we need to be," he reminded her pedantically. "You can't help Susana if you're in a prison cell. We need to avoid suspicion."
"So what's your big plan, then?" she challenged.
Dr. Lecter sighed. "I'm not sure. We're under a time constraint. Even if I were to give myself up--,"
"What?" Clarice's face was incredulous. "You must be joking."
"Not at all," Dr. Lecter said. "As Alonso Alvarez, I would have no credibility at all to gain access to the FBI file. If I were to surrender myself to the FBI, as Hannibal Lecter, then I would."
"You're delusional," Clarice said flatly.
"Not so. I have helped the FBI on two occasions. If I were to give myself up, presumably, they might see their way clear towards letting me save my daughter before throwing me in a cell for the rest of my life."
Clarice slammed her mug on the table. Dr. Lecter winced, expecting it to break. It did not.
"Jee-zus Christ on a crutch! Are you the same man who told me he'd never allow himself to be taken again? You're crazy to be thinking like this!"
Dr. Lecter smiled painfully. "No, Clarice. If I surrendered myself, you might at least be able to visit me in prison, or I might be paroled at some future date. If Susana is killed, there is neither visitation nor parole from that."
Clarice's eyes filled with tears. Her face crumpled. She was left with only the argument of insensate sorrow. "I cannot accept that the only choices are losing my husband or losing my daughter," she said before breaking down completely.
Dr. Lecter put his arms around her and held her. While he did, he reflected. His expression was somber.
He was very content with his life in Buenos Aires. He had money, a beautiful wife and daughter, and respect. He had expected his job to be a bore, but it had turned out to be oddly fulfilling for him: his students were sharp and intelligent and he enjoyed the work of educating young minds more than he thought. And he had once sworn never to return to custody. But then, a man's priorities change radically once he has a child.
Given the alternatives, Dr. Lecter had to at least consider the idea. He did not want to be incarcerated, and he knew that if he was, he would die in prison. But if he did not, his daughter would die in a dank Buenos Aires basement somewhere. Put in those terms, Dr. Lecter could only do one thing: nobly offer his neck in place of his daughter's. There was no other alternative.
In some corner of his mind, he found this amusing. He had always considered himself so apart from the rest of humanity. A man who decided for himself what he would do, who shrugged off society's moral yoke. Yet here he was, preparing to do the noble thing, to condemn himself to a lifetime of prison so that his child might live.
So he held his wife and thought about how he might accomplish this. In the hallway appeared a figure. He looked up to see Juana, the new maid. She blinked at him in confusion.
"Juana, please leave," he said. "This is not a good time."
"I'm sorry, señor," she replied. Her eyes were wide as she saw Clarice crying in her husband's arms. She turned around and walked away swiftly.
"There has to be some other way," Clarice sobbed against his shoulder. "There has to be, Hannibal. We haven't lived this long or fought this long for it to end like this."
"There may be," Dr. Lecter said. "I need some time to think about it."
"We don't have time," Clarice objected.
"There, there." An idea struck him. "Why don't you see what you can come up with from the papers on the prior murder. I'll see if there's some way I can obtain the FBI file quietly."
Clarice lifted her head and moved away from him, so she could see him.
"If you're going to steal it, I'm going with you," she declared loyally. "She's my daughter too."
"I'm not planning on that yet," Dr. Lecter said. "And I may be old, but I do think I could take out Special Agent Fontaine on my own."
Clarice smiled through her tears. "Don't count those young female FBI agents out," she said.
She rose, wiped her eyes, and headed for the office. "I'll see what I can find," she said as she left.
Hannibal Lecter rose himself and looked into the mirror. He examined his reflection carefully. The crow's feet in the corners of his eyes. The wrinkles of his forehead. His rapidly whitening hair. He was not vain in that sense and did not try to discount the fact that he was growing older.
"Whatever am I going to do?" he asked his reflection in the mirror. He had to think of something. Clarice was depending on him. His daughter, too.
He answered himself aloud. For a moment, he had to laugh at that – a psychiatrist talking to himself. Hardly a good sign.
"I will do what I must," he said. "In my time, I have escaped the strictest security measures and slipped the noose laid for me by enemies and police. I will get that file, or die trying."
After a moment, he added, "But I do hope Agent Fontaine is not as good a shot as my wife."
…
For the past few days, Susana had followed a bleak routine. Most of her day was spent in the cell in the basement. She was kept in there while he was at work. She tried a few means of escape on the first day. The door was locked from the other side and she could not even get to one of the locks; picking was out. She tried kicking it and only ended up with a sore foot.
Escape from the cell was not an option. So she did the only thing she could do: slept a lot and waited for the Skinner to come let her out. When she was awake in the cell, she retreated to her memory palace and sought out counsel.
She spent a fair amount of time in her father's office, reviewing everything she knew about serial killers and running through plans to escape or kill him. When she was not there, she went to the other room she had added in her memory palace: Quantico.
Clarice Starling would have been highly amused to see her daughter's representation of Quantico in her memory palace. Susana had never been there, or to the United States for that matter. She conceived of Quantico as a large, wooden-paneled room in which people sat at tables and studied books. In fact, Susana's Quantico bore much more resemblance to the study lounge in the University library than the subterranean corridors of the building.
But in her Quantico, she was able to seek out the information she needed. It wasn't much, but it was useful. The Skinner was a sadist. He enjoyed seeing her suffer. He seemed to relish emotional pain more than physical, but it would suffice him to so.
When he finally came home from work, he would let her out. The corpse had disappeared the night after she had disemboweled it, so thankfully that was no longer an issue. He usually forced her to do something humiliating: cleaning the floor or the bathroom seemed to be favorites. That wasn't too bad. Cleaning a toilet was not fun, but not even in the same league as dissecting a corpse and then being forced to eat what you pulled out.
What was worse was that she had no idea if her cooperation was having any effect. She did not know if her predecessors had ever come up with her idea, or if he was planning to spare her at all. Occasionally, he would come up to her while her hands were occupied and silently run a finger across the skin of her face, tracing the path that the scalpel would take. Her father told her he did so only to see her tremble with fear. It didn't help. She was afraid anyway. Every time he took her out of the cell, she kept a close eye on his hands, dreading the time a pink swim cap would show up in his grasp.
Bizarrely, he required her to rub skin cream into the skin of her face. The files at Quantico, as well as her father's office, told her that he had probably gotten that idea from the Buffalo Bill killings. The reason was the same: to make sure her skin was good and supple for when he removed it. He also insisted that she use a facial mask he had bought. Susana didn't think highly of his taste in cosmetics: it reeked and was hard to get off.
She was in her father's office, leaving her body in the cell. Her father sat behind his desk and glanced over at her.
"He'll be coming soon," he said gently. "He's late. Any minute now."
"I know," she answered, not wanting to think about it.
"You need to find out if your cooperation is doing anything," he lectured her primly.
"It's doing something already. It's sparing me pain."
Her father raised an eyebrow in the manner he did when she came up with something that pleased him. "How do you know?"
"There's a wire whip in the kitchen," she pointed out. "He hasn't used it on me. Yet."
"How do you know he uses it at all?" challenged Dr. Lecter.
Her head whipped around and fixed him with a glare that was pure Clarice Starling. "Because it's bloody."
She heard footsteps and hurriedly left her father be. She did not want her captor to know of his presence. That was hers. She backed up against the wall of the cell and waited for the locks to click.
They did, and there he stood before her. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, and that bizarre helmet. It had to have some meaning. Her father had told her it signified his transformation: when he wore it, he was not the man he usually was. He was the Skinner.
"Come out of there," he demanded.
She came out obediently, her eyes wary. He walked her upstairs with one meaty hand fastened on her upper arm. Occasionally, he dug his fingers between the muscle and the bone of her arm. He did so to watch her face twist in pain when he did. Instead of bringing her to the kitchen – her usual work location – he dragged her into the living room and threw her on the couch.
She glanced around. The room was done in Early South American Bachelor: functional and nothing more. The carpet was green, dirty, and probably older than she was. The couch was a hideous plaid that no one with an ounce of taste would have owned. In the corner, a large TV lorded over the rest of the room.
"You know," he huffed in that strange, deep voice, "that your time is swiftly approaching, little one."
Susana didn't say anything. As if to indicate what he meant, he stepped forward and grabbed her hair with one hand. With the other, he traced up the side of her face. His hands smelled like rotting meat.
"Yes, I know," she said, her eyes slitted.
He released her and spread his hands wide.
"What would you do," he asked, "if I were to spare you?"
Susana pondered. She had to be very careful in how she spoke. "I would be grateful if you felt my service was enough to void my sentence," she said.
His eyes narrowed. Susana tensed.
"You do not understand, little one," he said. "A sentence? Passed by an earthly judge? You belittle Me by thinking of Me in such a manner."
He lunged forward and grabbed her by the hair again. This time, he yanked her forward, pushing her in front of a closed cabinet door. He threw it open with his other hand. Her head was inexorably pulled back, her face up to observe what he had to show her.
Five glass bottles stood in the cabinet. Each one was filled with a clear liquid. Each one held a carefully removed human face. In some, the hair was still attached. Next to each was a smaller bottle with two eyes floating free in the same solution.
His voice was choked with rage. "Sentence," he said, his tone wreathing the word in deadly contempt. His hand moved forward as if to slap her. Susana cringed. He did not, but she knew it was only to avoid marking her face.
"No, little one, what has happened to you is that your soul belongs to the darkness. To Me, in other words. And you intrigue me, even though you grasp not the slightest hint of what has happened to you."
He threw her to the floor. She rolled over and looked at him helplessly. Rolling over and exposing the nape of the neck usually mollified him, as it did most higher primates.
"What I mean, little one," he said. "Your sentence, as you call it, stands. You belong to Me and will always. And what I have decreed will happen to you. There is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, that will prevent it from happening."
His hand dipped down and came up with a short, wicked-looking blade. Susana tried to get her feet under her in order to run. She hadn't even made it the entire week, she thought.
He saw her trying to move and clamped his boot down atop her ankle. It hurt like hell. He ground his heel down, watching her face twist, amused by the fact that she refused to scream or cry. All the more reason, he thought.
He moved his foot once she stopped trying to move. The knife was folded and disappeared into his pocket. In an almost conversational tone of voice, he continued.
"But you intrigue me, little one. There is more depth to you than there was to the others. So…I shall test you. If you pass…I shall stay my hand."
Susana had a queasy feeling. She felt that she would forfeit something, something very dear, if she agreed. But the alternative was a torturous and painful death. She closed her eyes and thought of a pink swim cap. And a scalpel.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked, wondering if her soul was forfeit.
The Skinner grabbed her arm again and led her down to the basement again. She wondered if he would lead her to her cell. He did not. He brought her to another room, not the one in which he had skinned the girl before. This was a smaller, squarish room. As seemed to be standard, there was a single lightbulb overhead.
In the middle of the room stood another girl. Her wrists were tied over her head. A gag plugged her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fear, but surprise was added to that mix when she saw Susana. Susana gasped herself. She knew this girl.
Her father spoke up helpfully in her mind. Cristina Vazquez. A year older than you. The youngest daughter of Presidente Vazquez, president of the University. You played together occasionally as children.
"On that table you will find a knife," the Skinner said mockingly. He gestured to a table just outside of Cristina's reach.
A long, low moan of terror issued from the gag.
"The test is as follows. You will take that knife and then you will kill her. Right here, right now. If you do not, then you must pay a forfeit."
He lifted his silver revolver and cocked it. Probably a .357, Susana thought in the back of her mind.
"There are some rules," he added. "No wounds on the back – just the front. She must see you do it. There must be at least ten separate wounds. All must bleed. You must stay close as she dies."
Susana's jaw dropped. She stared at him in a look of blank shock.
"If you do not follow these rules, or if she is not stabbed in the next thirty seconds, you will pay the forfeit." He gestured with the pistol. "The forfeit is that I will gut-shoot you and then take your face now." He laughed evilly.
"I'm sure your mother taught you that being gut-shot is the most painful way to die. And I won't end it with another bullet. You'll die hard and slow."
"…yes…," Susana managed. The whole thing – rules, victim, and all – seemed to be miles away. She had practiced fighting with guns and knives. Practice, with rubber weapons. But killing another human being was something she had never done before.
"Good. Begin."
Cristina threw herself forward, vainly trying to free herself. Susana stood rooted to the spot. She had no idea how to begin. This was someone she knew. What would happen to her once she was freed?
Just do it, Susana, her father said. I had no real complaint against Officers Pembry and Boyle. But I did what I had to do.
"One," the Skinner said.
Susana closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She retreated to her memory palace.
"Two," the Skinner continued, his eyes flashing in warning.
In her memory palace, Susana sought out the information she was looking for. She scanned the book carefully. She asked her father one quick question and considered his answer carefully.
"Three," the Skinner said irritably. The pistol began to move towards her.
Susana opened her eyes and stepped forward slowly. She took the knife in one hand and looked carefully at it. Cristina screamed behind her gag and bounced about on her rope like a marionette. Carefully, Susana walked up to her. Her pace was controlled and her mien calm.
"It's OK, Cristina. Calm down."
Cristina stopped, stood, and stared at Susana. Susana saw vulnerability, terror, and hope in her eyes. She gave the bound girl a soft, friendly smile.
"I won't hurt you," she said reassuringly. Then, above her smile, her eyes changed in an instant, becoming cold, calculating, and observing. The knife slid easily into the flesh of Cristina's stomach. Behind Susana, the Skinner nodded approvingly.
Cristina's eyes widened further in shock and betrayal. Susana brought up her left hand and seized her hair. She brought the knife across Cristina's throat in a sudden, vicious arc. She missed the carotid artery, but the flow of blood was immediate and substantial.
A bolt of rage entered Susana – at herself, at the Skinner, at fate for having forced her to this. Her eyes seemed to glow red at Cristina. She stabbed the bound girl again and again, adrenalin pumping her into a rage. She lost track of time, herself, and the room. There was only her hand, swinging and stabbing and the sudden, wet sound of tearing flesh.
Finally, it was done. Susana dropped the knife and sat down on the floor, spent. She took a moment to see what she had done. Cristina hung limp, cold, and dead. What had been a live, vibrant girl until Susana came along was now a mutilated, bloody corpse. She was a killer now.
Susana stood, ignoring the knife. She reached out and touched the gash on the other girl's neck. Her finger came back bloody. Her gorge rose and she forced it back down. Slowly, deliberately, Susana traced her finger in a line under one eye, then the other. Blooded, she turned back and faced the Skinner.
"Are you happy now?" she asked. Her voice was tired, angry, but also calm and rational.
The Skinner nodded. He was, indeed. The idea forming in back of his mind had passed its first test.
"Indeed," he agreed.