Consciousness returned slowly. At first, there was touch. She was lying on something hard and unyielding. There was a layer of cloth between her and the wood: she could feel it on her cheek. Then, there was smell. The odor of lemon Pledge and laundry detergent hit her nostrils. Then, as she took a deep breath, there was the coppery, nauseating scent of blood.
Then there were sounds. She could hear someone sobbing and raspy breathing. It sounded soupy, as if someone was trying to breathe with a heavy cold.
Clarice Starling sat up from where she had been lying on the dining room table. A vague wave of disorientation hit her. She put her hands to her face and then looked around groggily. When she took her hand away, she saw a spot of blood on the cuff of her shirt. Touching her throat revealed a bleeding wound. At first she panicked, but then realized after a moment that it would be okay. She gazed around the room.
She saw a bluish blob kneeling on the floor with a smaller black blob atop it. She blinked stupidly at it. It took her a moment or two of looking at it to focus and realize that it was Erin Lander leaning over something. A fallen body, it looked like.
Clarice pushed forward off the table and gained her feet unsteadily. She gazed drunkenly on the sight of Erin Lander crouched over a man's body. She saw it was Paul a second later, and then a second after that took in all the blood at his throat. Erin seemed occupied with whatever she was doing and did not turn around. Clarice saw the glint of silver in her hand.
Clarice's eyes widened and her lips paled in rage. All rational thought was burnt away in a red haze of fury. Her right hand fumbled for her gun. She knew a fraction of a second before her fingers encountered only empty air in her holster that it was not there. Even that was all right. Clarice was an experienced hand-to-hand fighter, and could easily take down the small doctor.
Clarice launched herself at Erin, her fingers hooking into claws. She grabbed Erin's arm and the waistband of her scrubs and flipped her off Paul D'angelo. She saw Paul's blood on Erin's fingers and it fueled her rage further. There would be time to save Paul, she prayed. But first she had to incapacitate the little murderer.
"What the--," Erin Lander gasped, and then Clarice was on her. She slammed the smaller woman against the floor and wrenched her arms behind her back. She was missing her gun but not her cuffs, and she grabbed them out and fastened them onto the struggling woman's wrists. Then she stood and took in her fallen enemy.
She cast a look back at Paul D'angelo, dear Paul down on the floor with his blue shirt turning dark purple from his heavily bleeding wound. Rage fogged her brain and had its way with her. She drew back her foot and buried it savagely into Erin Lander's unprotected ribs. Once, then twice. The agonized moans of her enemy were a sweet reward to the lizard brain that controlled Clarice Starling.
But Paul was down and he needed her. Clarice squatted by him where Erin had and took in all the blood.
"Starling," Paul groaned. "No...you shouldn't...she was...,"
"I know what she did to you," Starling said tightly. "Hold on, Paul. Where's Lecter?"
"No, Starling," Paul choked. "Lecter's gone. She was...not hurting...she stayed."
"Where did he go?" Starling said through clenched teeth. She grabbed a gauze pad nearby him and held it tightly against his throat. It already had some blood on it. In the back of her mind, she wondered how it had gotten there, but the forefront of her mind was concerned with Paul and with Dr. Lecter. She put his hand on it. Paul pointed to the front door.
"Hold the pressure there," she said importantly. "I'm going to get Lecter."
As she turned, she wondered if Dr. Lander would try anything. She ran over to where Erin lay on the floor and grabbed her by the front of her scrub shirt. Clarice's blue eyes blazed with fury into the rictus of pain on Erin's face.
"If he dies," she snarled bitterly, "you die."
Erin's face worked. "I didn't," she gasped. But Clarice was not interested in what a killer had to say. She dropped the smaller woman to the floor and ran to the front door. It was already open on its hinges, inviting in a black swath of the dark Ohio night. The screen door held a plate of glass rather than screen, and Clarice opened it and ran out onto the lawn.
There were no streetlights out this far in the sticks. It took her a moment to see two red taillights, already quite small and far down the road. Clarice gritted her teeth bitterly and ran for the car. Paul had parked it far away – a quarter of a mile or so. As she got closer, she realized there was something funny about the way the nose of the car sat on the shoulder of the road. She stopped and stared at it as it became apparent.
The rental car sat on its front tires like an old, tired dog. They had been expertly slashed, both of them. Clarice Starling let out a grunt of frustration. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her FBI cell phone. As soon as she did, she knew something was wrong: the phone was too light and too small in her hand. She pulled it out and examined the back critically. Instead of smooth plastic, she saw ridges, a plastic label, and copper contacts.
The goddam battery was missing.
Clarice screamed in frustration and almost threw the phone away in the grass. She spun and ran towards the red taillights of the departing Jeep. She knew she could not hope to outrun the vehicle. Not on foot. Against the moonglow, she saw a tiny hand stick out of the window of the Jeep and wave byebye at her. Astonishingly, the Jeep's taillights flared a deeper red.
You're not getting your little piece of fluff, doctor, Clarice thought bitterly. I promise you that. She's mine. Even if you get away from me this time.
Dr. Lecter stopped the Jeep and appeared to be waiting. Clarice thought he seemed to be enjoying this, waiting to see what would happen next.
I never even got to see him, she thought for a moment. All she had seen was his hand and the tiny dot of his head rising over the seat.
She turned and raced back to the house. Both Erin and Paul lay where she had left them. Clarice checked on Paul. With horror, she saw his hand limp on the floor holding the pad. Blood was steadily pooling under him from his torn throat. She leaned over him with concern and touched his limp cheek.
"Paul?" she asked, her eyes wide.
He did not reply.
She grabbed the pad and held it to his throat blindly. She pressed it down, hoping madly that enough pressure would do the trick. In that moment she was much like Dr. Lecter, hoping for the reverse of time. Ardently she wished for teacups to come back together, for Paul to to be up and walking and joking. For Paul to be alive. Her hand pressed down hard, hard enough to rock Paul D'angelo's limp head over.
But his eyes were too glassy and his form too still for her to mistake what had happened. She grabbed his wrist and felt no beat. His chest did not rise. Her eyes closed and tears rose behind them.
If only I'd stayed with him. If only I'd woken up a second before. If only the little bitch had left with Lecter instead of cutting on him. She looked over at where Dr. Lander lay on her side, watching mutely.
Clarice Starling did not feel herself to be rivals with Erin Lander, at least not in the forefront of her mind. Any emotions she had for Dr. Lecter were stored safely away where she dared not acknowledge them. The emotions she had begun to feel for Paul, however, required no such safeguarding: her horror and pain at her loss turned to fury. Absent Dr. Lecter, there was only one real target for that fury: the handcuffed woman lying on the floor in front of her.
As Erin Lander had before her, Clarice Starling surrendered to the control of her most basic emotions. She saw Erin as not a doctor, nor a person. Erin was merely the murderer of Paul D'angelo, devoid of any humanity. Worthy only of contempt.
"Where is the phone?" Clarice demanded. It galled her to ask the murderer anything, but she had no choice.
Erin coughed and pulled her knees up to protect her stomach. She flinched from Starling's gaze.
"Not on," she said.
"I need your car keys, then," Clarice demanded.
Erin Lander looked deliberately into Clarice Starling's eyes for a moment or two, then shook her head resolutely.
Clarice got up and looked around the room for her gun. Murderess though she might be, Erin Lander wasn't a criminal genius. Her gun was lying on a dining room chair. Clarice grabbed it up and checked it quickly. Loaded, with nothing in the chamber, the way she usually carried it. A vicious, savage expression crossed Clarice Starling's face as she racked the slide and sent a fat brass cartridge home into the chamber. She saw her cell-phone battery and grabbed that up too.
Clarice walked over to where Erin lay. As she went, the kindness ran from her face. She knelt down on Erin Lander's chest. She knew that it would hurt more where she had kicked Erin in the ribs and sat down as hard as she could. Erin's face twisted in pain. Clarice grinned down at her captive with no sympathy.
"Doctor, I don't have time for this," Clarice said. "Where are the keys?"
Erin Lander set her jaw resolutely and said nothing.
Clarice's blue eyes gleamed with fury. She pressed the muzzle of the gun against Erin Lander's cheek.
"Do you think that scares me?" Erin Lander asked, her voice full of ashes and bitterness.
"I will kill you for what you've done," Clarice panted. "It's a question of how much you want to suffer before you go." Rage colored her words and choked her syllables. "Do you have the faintest idea what you have done?"
"I tried to save him," Erin gasped. "I didn't kill him."
Clarice raised the barrel of the gun, meaning to pistol-whip the other woman for her blasphemy. Erin flinched. Clarice snorted at her cowardice.
"Then who did?" Clarice asked bitterly. She slid off Erin suddenly and lowered the gun.
"No, seriously," she continued. "I want to hear this."
"Lecter c-cut him," Erin stammered, staring at Clarice Starling in walleyed fear. "I tried to save him. I was trying to save him when you pulled me off him."
Clarice let out a bitter chuckle.
"You are something else," she said sarcastically. "But I'll tell you what. Give me your goddam car keys and you'll live to see tomorrow."
Erin shook her head. "No," she said simply.
"I'll kill you," Clarice threatened.
"Kill me, then," Erin said, and her face smoothed out into something that resembled serenity. "You'd just be doing me a favor, Starling. I won't let you put him in a cage."
"He abandoned you," Clarice said sharply. "Left you to take the rap for him."
Erin shook her head. "I had a choice, and I made it."
"He won't come back for you," Clarice pointed out.
Erin nodded and let out a sigh. Her eyes focused on nothing.
"I know," she said softly.
Clarice Starling gripped her gun and shook with rage. Already, the death of Paul D'angelo had blown out most of her emotional fuses, leaving a fury behind that knew no bounds. Now, to be balked so seamlessly by his murderer was positively infuriating. And the simple fact was, Erin knew where the keys to her car were and Clarice did not. They could be anywhere in the entire house.
For the second time, Erin Lander would prevent her from getting to Dr. Lecter, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
She sat there, her eyes hot and her face burning, for a moment or two. Then she decided that if Erin was going to keep her from catching Lecter, at the least she wasn't going to let her be so goddam holy about it. She could watch Lecter depart in the car, and see herself that he had abandoned her. Maybe that would sway her. Clarice got her feet under her and grabbed Erin Lander under her arms.
"C'mon, sweetcakes," Clarice said coldly. "On your feet. You're gonna catch the bullet for Lecter? Then you get to watch him go. Watch him zoom right out of your life and leave you to take the fall."
She hoisted her captive to her feet and shoved her forward rudely. Erin did not fight her, but went along peaceably in front of Clarice to the door. The two women stood on the porch of the country house, watching the tiny Jeep on the road a mile away.
Erin Lander started to cry softly when she saw the Jeep. She strained forward, as if desire alone could teleport her forward to its safety. Clarice Starling grabbed her arm and dug her fingers into her arm, grinning cruelly at the smaller woman's despair.
The Jeep began to move again. Without any real fanfare, it disappeared over the hill and was gone. Erin Lander slumped as she saw it go. She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
"You happy now?" Clarice asked briskly.
Erin took a moment to answer.
"Yes," she said. "He's gone, and you can't get him. It doesn't matter what you do to me, Starling."
"Paul D'angelo is dead because of you," Clarice hissed. She spun Erin around to face her and dug her left hand painfully into Erin's chin. "If Dr. Lecter kills anyone else – anyone! – you will be directly responsible for that. Now give me those goddam car keys, Dr. Lander. I'm not screwing around with you. Give them to me or I will kill you where you stand."
Erin sighed, and a look of utter loss crossed her face.
"No," she said simply.
Clarice cursed. Well, she had given the killer a chance. Several chances. If she chose to throw them away, that was nothing to Clarice. And it wasn't like the world would miss Paul D'angelo's murderer. She took out her gun and clicked off the safety.
Erin Lander knew that the end was very near. She was not suicidal, but she did share one thing with those who were: the belief that life could hold no further joy. Without Dr. Lecter, it was all ashes in her mouth anyway. She had made her choice and it had turned out to be wrong. She hadn't even been able to save Paul D'angelo. To thine own self be true, so the old saying went. A more cynical aphorism occurred to her as a counter: No good deed goes unpunished.
But Dr. Lecter was safe, beyond Starling's reach. And that would at least make her death worthwhile. Erin Lander was as intelligent as her rival, and she could draw the conclusions easily enough. If Starling let her live, the FBI would discover that Erin had not killed Paul D'angelo, which would get Starling in trouble for pulling her off him. At the least, she would be suspended again. Dr. Lecter had explained a bit to her of Starling's recent shaming in the FBI.
Starling would kill her. She knew it. She could see it. It was the only way for Clarice Starling to avoid the shame of suspension again.
What a stupid thing to die for, she thought. Clarice Starling's career.
No, she corrected herself. She wasn't dying for Starling's career. She was dying so that the man she loved would remain free, and because she had elected to try and save a man who needed her. That was worth it. There was honor in dying that way. She was sorry about D'angelo, but she had tried to save him right up to the point where Clarice Starling had attacked her. She would be Dr. Lecter's sacrificial lamb, offering herself up to Starling's wrath so that he might live.
The odd thing was that both Paul D'angelo and Dr. Lecter had pleaded with her for Starling's life. But now Dr. Lecter was gone and Paul D'angelo was dead, and there was no one left to plead for her. She would not give Starling the pleasure of begging herself: clearly, it wouldn't do any good. It made her wonder who was really the monster.
She wondered where Starling would do it: if the muzzle would press against her ear or the back of her neck. Or perhaps Starling meant to blow her stolen kidneys out and watch her suffer. Or perhaps Starling would do it face to face, so that she would be the last thing Erin saw.
"Last chance," Starling warned coldly. "This is your one chance to redeem yourself, doctor."
Erin Lander drew in a deep breath and sighed. She smiled beatifically. With the end so near, she was able to find some dark peace in knowing that her death had cheated Starling of her prey.
"I don't expect you to understand, Agent Starling," she said calmly. "It's all right. You don't know any better."