Night fell on the large, old house. It stood alone on its hill, endless open fields separating it from its neighbors. One might never have known that only twenty miles separated it from the city. Out here, there was nothing but open grass, cornfields, and grain silos rising high like cylindrical fingers touching the sky. Dr. Lecter found the environs a bit on the rustic side, but the house itself was comfortable enough.
It came furnished, and Dr. Lecter appreciated this for convenience's sake. The furnishings were not quite up to his usual standards, but they would do. He had to plan his next move. Florence was out, and he regretted that. It had been such a beautiful city, and the museum had been able to feed his intellectual thirsts in a way few environments could. The European police would be on the lookout for him. It is much easier to hide out when no one is looking for you.
South America struck him as a possibility. But South America in the summer could be brutally hot, as he knew from past experience. He thought about Australia and wondered if that might be a possibility. He'd never been to Perth or Sydney, and those might be big enough for him to hide out in. He finally disposed of the idea after thinking about how he might flee if he needed to.
He lay on his side in bed as he thought, Erin Lander small and warm against him as she slept. Dr. Lecter's bandaged hand hung over her side in a friendly gesture. Her shoulders pressed against him as she breathed. Dr. Lecter could watch the soft, white skin of her throat beat in time with her pulse.
Ah yes. Erin. This was a matter for concern. She wanted to go with him. Dr. Lecter liked the idea, but had some real reservations about it. One could be solved in time. One could not. He did not want her to interrupt her residency for him. For one thing, it would be a shame to waste all that talent. Just as Clarice Starling was born to hunt, Erin Lander was born to heal. For another, there was her health to think of. Dr. Lecter only knew in passing the drug regimen she needed, but her immune system would be suppressed for as long as she had the transplant. He did not relish the thought of trying to treat an immune response while in hiding.
Despite that, he did not know what he would do if she demanded to accompany him. It was, after all, her life to throw away if so she chose. And she had helped him where Clarice had not. That was difficult for him to acknowledge, but nonetheless true. He did not know what would happen if she insisted on staying with him. All he could do was make sure she knew the costs of such a choice. Making it for her was not something he was prepared to do.
But despite it all, he did not want Erin to suffer no matter what happened. Not after everything she had done for him. She could have turned him in multiple times, but hadn't. Such loyalty demanded at least some consideration. Dr. Lecter was a man known far and wide for his brutality, but compassion was not completely alien to him.
Thoughts of loyalty and compassion led his mind to Clarice. She hadn't been loyal to him, of course, but she was loyal to her unappreciative masters with the FBI. And loyal to her own principles. Unfortunately, those principles involved putting him back in prison. That was more than he could allow. A pity, really. And he knew that somewhere, in some subterranean room at Quantico, Clarice was somewhere trying to bring him down.
Dr. Lecter wondered idly if it would be possible to ever have Clarice and Erin at the same table. In many ways, he thought they were just alike. Both young career women, both possessed of strong will and principle. Both orphans, with the steely-strong survival instinct of the orphan. Both incorruptible according to their own principles. Just as Clarice Starling guarded her lambs, Erin Lander would protect those under her care. She had already stolen for him, lied for him, and hidden him away. How far would she go to protect him? Would it be as far as Clarice Starling went to protect her lambs? Would she kill for him?
Dr. Lecter did not know and did not want things to approach that point. He shifted in the bed. Erin's back against him was warm. He placed a hand calmly over her kidney, tracing the curved shape of the scar he had put there. His mark on her.
He would have to wake her up early, he decided. Her life had to go on, at least until she made a decision on whether or not to abandon it for him. Dr. Lecter hoped she would make such a decision rationally.
But there would be time for this in the future. Dr. Hannibal Lecter stretched out his lithe body and closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly.
...
Clarice Starling grinned victoriously and stuck her head in the curtained-off alcove that she and Paul D'angelo occupied.
"Ha ha ha," she said. "Guess what I got."
The night before, they had worked very late. After finally calling it a night around eleven o'clock, Clarice had offered Paul a cup of coffee over at her place. He had accepted. Ardelia had been there, at first annoyed that Clarice was home so late, then shocked to see Clarice bringing home a man.
Ardelia considered Clarice her own responsibility while at home, and any man Clarice had ever tried to bring home had to pass the Ardelia test. Most did not: Ardelia Mapp had very high standards. Most fathers did not subject their daughter's boyfriends to half so rigorous a test as Ardelia did.
Paul, for his part, had passed the Ardelia test with flying colors. Humorous and charming, he had begun to win over Ardelia. He was smart enough to realize what role Ardelia was playing. By the end of the night, Ardelia was elbowing Clarice and raising her eyebrows. Paul's offer to give Ardelia the recipe for his homemade tomato sauce clinched the deal. Clarice expressed good-humored displeasure that Ardelia had sold her out for tomato sauce.
That part vaguely bothered Clarice. Recent experiences had left her a bit wary of men who liked cooking too much. But Paul was funny, smart, and attractive. He respected her for her brain and her experiences with Dr. Lecter. And on the job, he was a match for her own dedication in tracking and finally catching Dr. Lecter.
Clarice had continued focusing on Ohio. The OSU Medical Center been a bonanza of information for her. They had graciously verified for her that Dr. Erin Lander was indeed a surgical resident there. More importantly, they had also told her that a patient had been treated there recently for a severed thumb. Thomas Daum, no known address, no known employer. Adding to the interest was the fact that Mr. Daum had left the hospital. He hadn't been discharged and he hadn't signed out AMA. He had simply gotten up and vanished.
The Columbus papers had also told her that a man had been attacked the day Mr. Daum disappeared after his operation. Bizarrely, his tongue had been cut out. The hospital was more loath to part with details on that, as legal action was still a possibility, but Clarice knew exactly who had done the deed. It was Dr. Lecter's style. She asked for and got the medical chart for Thomas Daum faxed to her, which clinched the deal. Mr. Daum's doctor of record was Dr. Erin Lander.
That was all well and good. What was better was the phone call she had received early that morning. That had given her the ammunition she needed to press on. Plus, let's face it, pizza was on the line.
"Agent Starling?" the flat Midwestern voice had said into her ear. "This is Deputy Harwood, Franklin County Sheriff's Office."
"Morning, Deputy," she had said. "What can I do for you?"
"Did you send out a bulletin asking for information about a plane? Stolen out of Baltimore?"
"Yes, I sure did," she said. She scrabbled for a pen. "You have something for me?"
"Yes, I do," he affirmed. "We have a plane that's been abandoned for a few days out at Darby Dan airport."
"Is that the big one?"
"No, we've got a few, actually. Darby Dan gets mostly small-plane traffic. Anyway, it's just been sitting there. No slot rented for it, no refuel, no nothing. Tower records indicate it landed all right a few days ago, but whoever flew the thing just disappeared after it landed."
"What's the tail number?" Starling panted.
The deputy gave it to her. It matched the plane stolen from the airfield near Chesapeake.
Starling grinned victoriously.
"Weird thing is, we had a missing persons case too," the deputy said, displaying more sense than Starling usually saw in local yokels. "A private pilot disappeared from the airport the morning it landed. We know he was there, people saw him, but his car is gone and so is he."
Starling leaned forward and bit her lip. Somehow, she should have known.
"You have that missing persons report handy, Deputy Harwood?"
"Hold on a moment," he answered, and Starling heard paper shuffling.
"Right here. What did you need? Is it related?"
"Might be," Starling said. "Could you get me a make and model of the car? Tag number, maybe?"
He gave her that too. She scribbled it down along with the words "Jeep Cherokee".
"Much obliged, Deputy Harwood," Starling said warmly. "This helps us a lot."
"Not a problem," the deputy said.
"You have a good day now," Starling said, and hung up. That was when she stuck her head into the curtains and announced her victory to Paul D'angelo.
"Whatcha got, Starling?" he asked.
Starling handed him her notes and the fax she had received.
"Well, I know if I tell you Lecter's in Columbus, you'll lecture me," she said, grinning. "So I'll just say this. A patient named Thomas Daum was admitted to OSU Medical Center a few days ago to have his thumb reattached. No known employer, no known address. They thought he was just homeless. And he just walked out after his surgery. And his doctor was Erin Lander."
Paul nodded with that small, sideways grin she liked on his face. It invariably made her grin herself. "Not bad, Starling, but not proof positive."
"You know what Daum means in German? Thumb. Tom Thumb. Now who do you know who likes those sort of word games?"
"Like I said, Starling," Paul said, "it's good stuff, but you gotta be able to convince the Big Man." He jerked a thumb at Crawford's office down the hall.
That was okay. Starling had saved the best for last.
"And I found the plane," she concluded, showing him the tail number. "Sheriff's office says it's on the tarmac at Darby Dan." She reached forward and snatched the New Hampshire report off his desk before he could say anything.
"I know, I know," she said. "Here, look at this." She took the New Hampshire report and held it up side by side with her notes. Her blue eyes sparkled.
"The tail number is wrong. Dr. Lecter's plane's tail number ends in 43, not 34. Close--real close-- but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." She handed him both reports and crossed her arms triumphantly at him.
She enjoyed the look of slow realization on Paul D'angelo's face as he looked at what she had come up with. Slowly, he nodded at her, acknowledging her victory with good faith.
"Well?" she prompted.
"Not too shabby, Clarice," he grinned.
She raised an eyebrow. "'Not too shabby'? Is that all I get?"
Paul D'angelo pushed himself forward out of his chair and fell at her feet on his knees. He held up his arms and bowed down low before her. He seemed not at all concerned about pressing his face into the institutional gray carpet.
"I'm not worthy," he cried dramatically. "Please, may I bask in the reflected glory of your investigative excellence?"
"That's more like it," Clarice said archly. "I don't get enough of that treatment around here."
He grabbed her around the knees. "Marry me," he said.
Clarice laughed. How long had it been since she laughed out loud? Before Feliciana Fish Market, at least. It felt good. She felt good.
"It's so sudden," she played along.
"It's right. Doesn't it feel right to you? We'll raise our young down here in the fluorescent gloom. Crawford can baby-sit. Kids don't really need sunlight, do they?"
The thought of Crawford baby-sitting an infant made Clarice laugh harder. She shook her head.
"I was referring to my pizza," she said, grinning. "Pizza owed by you, tendered to me." She tapped her chest with her thumb, just in case there was any doubt who was the creditor here.
Paul abandoned her mid-bow and scrape and got back in his chair. "Oh yes. Pizza. Two pies was the bet."
"With banana peppers," she told him.
A look of horror crossed his face. "The wedding's off, then," he deadpanned. "I could never marry a woman who ate banana peppers." He shivered in delicate horror.
"Men," she lamented, putting a hand over her forehead in mock despair. "How quickly they abandon you. Tell you what. Let's go to Columbus and see what we can find. That'll make up for the pain of my lost engagement."
Paul nodded. Humor was his way of dealing with most things, but when seriousness was demanded, he dropped it instantly. "Crawford's in a meeting until eleven. This is definitely enough to get a travel chit, though."
"Travel chit, hell," Clarice said. "We're going hunting for doctors."
"Hunting for doctors? Are they in season?" he grinned.
"They are now," Clarice said promptly. "First Lander, then Lecter."