Twilight began to claim the town of Menatchie, West Virginia. Children playing out in the street ran home. Menatchie was a small town, and safe after dark, but the streetlights did not cast much light and it was easier to play inside.
There are a thousand towns like Menatchie dotting the South. They are generally poor and mostly populated by black men and women. These are neither the dangerous ghettoes that provide news fodder nor the wealthier black suburbs that spring up around most major cities. Towns like Menatchie constitute a blank spot in the collective memory of African-Americans. And that is a shame, because there is something uniquely American and hopeful in towns of this type.
The houses are small and the population largely works in jobs that require long hours and pay very low wages. Towns like Menatchie are often down-at-the-heels, but most of the people who live there own their own homes, trying to catch their little piece of the American Dream. Many homeowners keep their houses looking as nice as they can. A few, of course, give up as time goes on.
Towns like Menatchie are often created and sustained solely by black people. Often, the mayor is black, the school board, police chief, and indeed the entire police department – all ten or twelve men – is black. Yet they never receive any accolades for their creations, or for keeping the town's departments running.
Those who grow up in towns like Menatchie often leave the towns never to return. The genteel poverty and barely lower-middle-class status often drives them to greater things. This is something that crosses the color barrier: both Clarice and Lisa Starling have done exactly this from their own respective hometowns. But despite the poverty and the constant teetering on the edge of stability that is endemic to these towns, there is a quiet pride here. The townsfolk are largely good neighbors: they work hard at their jobs and raise their kids right.
Menatchie is a town like many others, but it takes special pride in its police chief. The department is small and buys its cruisers used from a wealthier town. Twelve men work in three shifts there, keeping the townspeople safe from those who would hurt them. The police chief in Menatchie was once Section Chief of Behavioral Sciences for the FBI. Menatchie is proud to have her.
The townsfolk of Menatchie did not know that Ardelia Mapp resented her position in life intently. Menatchie lay only twenty miles away from the town where Clarice Starling grew up. And where, years later, Susana Alvarez Lecter visited her grandfather's grave – the grave Ardelia had bought for him – and where Ardelia had tried to arrest her. The botched arrest, and the subsequent escape of Susana Alvarez Lecter from custody in the Wheeling Hospital ICU, had doomed Ardelia's career.
Police Chief Ardelia Mapp adjusted her ugly tan-and-brown uniform blouse and scowled at the office. Like the rest of Menatchie, the police station was down-at-the-heels. Her office was the largest, but even so, it was ugly gray cinderblock walls and a cheap wooden desk. The radio buzzed in incessantly with her officers calling in. The dispatcher sat at her desk in the main room outside. She glanced in hesitantly at Ardelia behind her glass door.
Ardelia was studying the Tattler. The headline had caught her eye. She did not recognize the cute blond girl on the left. As she pored over the picture, she recognized the good high cheekbones and delicate features she had seen once before. But the picture on the right brought back a rush of old memories and resentment.
Two years of running a municipal department. Two years of being the down-at-the-heels cousin to other law enforcement agencies. She resented deeply the looks former FBI colleagues had given her. She'd done a lot for this department and this town since moving here. She was respected and liked here. But in the outside world, her ugly uniform and tiny area of jurisdiction spelled it out. Ardelia Mapp, failure.
Ardelia removed her knife from her belt. The knife was a Harpy. Dr. Hannibal Lecter, were he still alive, would have found that choice of a blade very, very interesting. Identifying with your tormentor, Ardelia? She carefully cut the pictures out and tacked them to her bulletin board with a thumbtack.
"You're here, you little bitch, huh?" she said to the picture of Susana Alvarez Lecter. "Well, this time I'm gonna get you. And I'm going to do it right."
She stared at the picture of the injured girl, lying in a hospital bed Ardelia had put her in, and then stared at her phone.
You're not FBI anymore, Ardelia. You're Podunk PD. You've got something resembling a life here. Don't screw it up.
No way, she thought back to the voice. Susana Alvarez Lecter took my career away from me and dumped me in this hick Podunk town. I'll prove it to everyone. I'll bring that little bitch in and present her to the great illustrious FBI in handcuffs.
Ardelia picked up the phone and dialed the number that phone companies routinely make available to police officers.
"Hi," she told the operator. "This is Police Chief Ardelia Mapp, Menatchie Police Department. I need the number for Lisa Starling."
"What city, please?"
"I'm not sure. Arlington, I think."
Ardelia was lucky. She hit paydirt. The operator gave her the phone number. After writing it down and hanging up, Ardelia leaned back in her chair and tapped a pen against her teeth thoughtfully.
Fuck it. I can't stand coming in here every day, watching my boys jug drunks and settle domestic disputes.
She dialed the number. A young woman's voice answered. For a moment, Ardelia was stunned. She had hoped to hear a voice like Clarice's. Lisa Starling sounded rather like she was a twelve-year-old.
"Agent Starling?" she asked, and a great sadness invaded her gut to say those words again.
"Yes, who is this?"
"My name is Ardelia Mapp," she said. "You may have heard of me. I'd like to discuss Susana Alvarez Lecter with you."
…
Lisa Starling was ensconced down in her cubicle at Quantico. She wore a pair of headphones, which were hooked to a tape player. She rewound the tape and played it again for the tenth time. Screams and the wet-punch sounds of stabbings invaded her ears. She was calm as she listened, not disturbed by the horror on tape. There it was.
"Mr. Herman was very rude," Susana Alvarez Lecter said. "Please, we implore you not to be rude. It might save your life someday. This concludes our public service announcement."
It was frightening, certainly. Susana sounded awfully calm for a woman who had just castrated and then killed a man. It was certainly a gutsy move, executing a man with millions of listeners in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut listening. It was too bad that they did not have a recording of Susana Alvarez on file to try and voiceprint it. Nonetheless, Lisa was positive that Susana had done this. The voice sounded like it was a young woman. There wasn't even the slightest hint of a Spanish accent, but she knew that her cousin's English was only accented when she wanted it to be.
A lab tech poked her head past the black curtains that marked off Lisa's cube from the rest of the world.
"Agent Starling," she said calmly, "the autopsy results are in. Wanna come see?"
"Definitely," Lisa said, and put down her headphones.
"We have a surprise for you," the lab tech said.
"I've seen corpses before," Lisa said calmly. "It doesn't bother me."
"It's not that. We don't have the body here, actually. Well, not all of it."
In the lab, the tech handed Lisa a few sheets of paper. Lisa scanned the topmost sheet. In dry, academic terminology, the report listed how Ray Herman had died. Eighteen stab wounds were found in the abdomen and thorax. A large slice had cut into his belly and ran up to the ribcage. Lisa raised her eyes.
"Portions of the external genitalia were excised?" she read quizzically. "What a way to put it."
"It gets better," the tech said calmly.
Lisa continued reading. "The excised material was found in the oral cavity of the deceased." She looked at the tech. "So she stuffed it in his mouth after she cut it off."
The tech nodded. "Only one thing, though," she said.
Lisa sighed. Tech drama was well known through the FBI. They liked to drag things out and make you guess. Agents commonly did not understand all of the black arts of the tech.
"Well, what's the one thing now?" she asked. Her drawl grew stronger, indicating her annoyance.
"It's not his," the tech said drily.
"Not his?"
"We ran blood tests on blood that we found in the…umm..the severed member. Blood type doesn't match." The tech smiled briefly with gallows humor. "It's not his weiner. It's somebody else's."
Lisa wrinkled her nose. It was the only expression of disgust she ever permitted herself while on duty. She knew that others would think she was weak because she was young and female and inexperienced. She would not allow herself to gag or even pull a distressed face no matter what horror she was confronted with at work. Only nose wrinkling was allowable. She did not yet realize that it made her look like a little girl confronted with a worm.
"Do we know whose it is?" she asked, knowing the tech would not volunteer the information. Part of it was tech drama; part of it was testing her.
"Very good, Agent Starling. Yes, we do. The security guard at the studio had also been stabbed. It's his. Blood type and DNA matches."
"Have we found Mr. Herman's penis?" She refused to be circumspect about it. It was evidence, it was missing, and she wasn't going to be coy.
"No. It was not in the studio when NYPD got in there. There were some blood stains on the carpet that probably came from it, but it's gone."
Trophy taker, Lisa thought. Susana had taken a few trophies from her previous murders, but never body parts. She had taken police badges and guns and walkie-talkies from her victims, as well as the cruiser she had converted to an impromptu gas chamber. Behavioral Science was split on whether this qualified her as a trophy taker or if she had simply taken them to use them later on. Lisa had privately believed that her murderous kin took them only to use them later on. The police paraphernalia all ended up used in later murders.
Was she now taking trophies? Lisa didn't think so. It wasn't a Lecter thing to do. Taking trophies was for 'lower' killers, killers who were controlled by their own demons. Although her cousin was capable of horrible atrocities, Lisa considered her like her diabolical father. Susana killed because she wanted to, not because she needed to. If she made a mistake, it wouldn't be a stupid one.
In fact, Lisa believed that Susana would flee New York relatively quickly. She was a foreigner; she had no real attachment to New York City. She would know that the crime she had committed – about as high-profile as they came – would make New York swiftly inhospitable. In Chicago, she had the advantage of being unknown. Not so this time. She might strike again in New York City, but after two murders she would not be there.
But just as the guards of the law were up, so were Susana's. She would not do something obvious like visit her grandfather's grave on the anniversary of his death as she had before. She might dare them somehow, but she would cover her tracks.
Lisa Starling returned to her desk, still thinking about how to catch her cousin. She was not thrilled to see Deputy Chief DeGraff waiting in the curtained-off hallway, his arms folded.
"Hello, Agent Starling," he said coldly.
"Hello, sir," she said neutrally.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm reviewing the autopsy reports on Ray Herman," she answered. "Mr. Herman was mutilated, as you know."
He nodded. "Don't worry your pretty little head too much about it, Agent Starling."
Lisa quelled the rush of anger that rose in her. "Excuse me, sir?" she said.
"Leave it to the profilers."
"I am attached to this case, for now," she said calmly. She knew if she reacted angrily, she would be falling right into his trap. A recruit fresh out of the Academy would have little chance in an argument with a deputy chief.
"You're not a profiler," he said. "You're never even been on a case before. Oh, I know. You've graduated from the Academy. But the people here are professionals. You're still wet behind the ears. Don't pretend to be something you're not, Agent Starling. Spend a few years in the field offices first. Once you've gotten some experience under your belt, then you'll be a real FBI agent."
"I am here because Chief Quincy asked me to be," she said.
"And don't think that's because of you. That's because of your last name and some crazy theory on Quincy's part. You're not here to help the investigation. You're here as a publicity stunt. Go home, Starling. Go home and let the real agents do the investigating."
"I'd like to help, sir," she said in a faint whisper. Tears burned behind her eyes. She clamped them shut and forced the tears away. "I'm just trying to do my job."
"Go home, Starling. That's an order."
"Sir?"
"Are you questioning an order?" His eyes, the same shade of gray as his suit, pierced her. There was no sympathy in them at all. His mouth turned down sourly.
"No, sir," she said, and bit her lip. She gathered up her things and left.
DeGraff watched her go. Damn kid, he thought. Maybe one day she'll end up with enough of a thick skin to survive around here. But not if she cries whenever she gets yelled at by a superior. Damn Quincy anyway, him and his publicity stunt. Girl like that ought to be a school psychologist. Or a kindergarten teacher. Something where she'd do some good instead of getting in the way here.
Lisa Starling took deep breaths in the elevator up to the surface. Why did he hate her so much? What had she ever done to him? Or was he just one of the people who heard her name and figured she must be just like her traitorous cousin?
It was drizzling, and Lisa was soon covered in a sheath of wet droplets. She tried to protect her head with her papers. Figures. Matches my mood. Her car was across the parking lot, and she jogged across the wet macadam to get to it. Lisa Starling did not own a Mustang as the other side of the family favored. She drove an eight-year-old Trans Am. The car smelled of air freshener and was well cared for. She opened the door and sat down behind the wheel. For just a moment, she took a deep, sobbing breath and wiped the tears furiously from her eyes.
Then she started the car and slammed it into first. Like her cousin, Lisa knew how to drive stick shift and preferred it. The car sped past the Marine guard at the gate fast enough that he waved a finger at her in a tut-tut-tut gesture and smiled. The car headlights popped up and pierced the drizzly gray air.
Home was an apartment in Arlington. Lisa entered the institutional-looking hallway and climbed up the institutional-looking stairs. Her door was bland and gray. The apartment number was labeled on it in gold letters, the only attempt to make the place seem attractive.
By her door lay a package from FedEx. Lisa picked it up curiously and looked at it. Her name was printed in neat block letters. The return address was illegible. The package had been shipped from New York City.
A brief chill ran through Lisa. She wondered if she shouldn't call Forensics. Then she thought of DeGraff telling her she was just a publicity stunt and to let the real profilers do the work. So she unlocked her door and padded to the tiny area that claimed to be her kitchen.
The tape yielded to a sturdy kitchen knife. She opened the box to reveal a cream-colored envelope. Her name was written across the center of the envelope. She looked at it with trepidation and took it out.
Susana Alvarez Lecter's handwriting was nothing like her father's copperplate. Instead, she had a round and flowing girl's script. Lisa almost had to laugh upon seeing it. The killer's handwriting was utterly unremarkable. Her penmanship was neat, but the writing itself looked like the handwriting of any number of young women.
The subject matter was not unremarkable, however.
Dear Cousin Lisa,
I must admit to having been surprised to read about you in the paper. Not that you had joined the manhunt to bring me to 'justice'. Rather, that you even existed. I'm afraid that my mother neglected to inform me that you walked the earth. Was there a family feud I didn't know about, perhaps? Did your daddy wrong my grandfather somehow? Brothers always fight, it's said.
If there was, it's silly. Both my grandfather and your daddy are dead and in the ground. I did a bit of background research, if you don't mind. It's true that my grandfather died in the line of duty whereas your daddy sold hog feed and died in bed with a prostitute, but none of that matters now, hmmm? They're both simply bones now. No need to pick over old bones. I was unable to find out much about your mother, so I must suppose she was one of those unremarkable West Virginia women who bore a litter of children for her husband, slapped them around, and lived and died without drawing any undue attention to herself.
The FBI as a career, hmmmm? You must be a glutton for punishment, dear Cousin Lisa. The FBI is not a forgiving place, and it is hardly a haven for Starlings right now. The FBI deeply, deeply resents my mother's decision to not play their game and to instead go with her heart. If you continue in the FBI, you'll bear a scarlet S on your breast for life, I'm afraid.
When I was a little girl, my mother often used to take me out onto the terrace. She would have the servants bring us drinks – wine for her, apple juice or milk for me. She told me of her prior life – we would talk for hours. She told me a few times that the FBI was no place for a lady. I doubt you had quite the same urge to be a lady that I did – the daughter of a hog feed salesman and a cipher would probably have precious little grasp of ladylike – but it struck me as a terrible place if one could not be ladylike there. When I grew older, she was more crude about it: she told me when I was fourteen that "you could only succeed in the FBI if you had a dick".
Nature has denied us both that organ, which may be for the best – ever notice how men seem to be ruled almost completely by that particular piece of flesh? However, I am nothing if not a considerate relative, so I've included a small gift to help you get by that particular postulate of my mother's.
I suppose you want very badly to meet me right now, and I cannot help but suspect that your motivations are not to recreate family ties. So I'll have to decline that request for right now. But I promise you, Cousin Lisa, you'll see my face soon enough.
Your cousin and pal,
Susana Alvarez Lecter
The letter alternately angered and frightened Lisa. Apparently, Susana had inherited her father's ability to home in on her weak points and find exactly what would needle her the most. She had also done some research on her. She had her home address, obviously enough. Plus, she knew the humiliating circumstances of Lisa's father's death. Suddenly Lisa felt very vulnerable. She reached down for the 9mm Glock on her belt. Its cool plastic grip felt good in her hand and comforted her. Then her eyes wandered over the bottom of the letter again.
However, I am nothing if not a considerate relative, so I've included a small gift to help you get by that particular postulate of my mother's.
Lisa swallowed. Oh God. She didn't. She didn't.
In the box was a bundle wrapped in fine silk. It was white silk. One end was stained with blood and other stains Lisa did not want to think about. She took a deep breath and pulled the silk free. A fleshy cylinder spun from within the silk and fell on Lisa's kitchen floor.
Lisa stared at it in horror.
"Oh, Jesus Christ!" she said. She closed her eyes once and gave herself a moment or two to tremble. Then she carefully picked up the phone, dialed a number, and in a very careful and calm voice, she told the secretary of Behavioral Sciences what had happened and to please send out a forensics team to her apartment.
She thought for a moment and asked if the tech was still there. The secretary told her that she was.
"Could I speak with her, please?" Lisa asked, trying not to stare at the severed piece of flesh lying on her kitchen linoleum.
"Sure," the secretary said, and helpfully connected her to the lab.
"Crime lab. Barbara speaking," came crisply from the receiver
"Hi, Barbara," Lisa said tightly. "Remember how I asked you where Mr. Herman's missing penis was?"
The older woman was nonplussed. "Well…yes…why?"
"Guess what?" Lisa continued humorlessly. "I found it."