Author's note: Yes, here we have the other three Special Guest Victims. Hopefully they will be pleased with their literary ends. They're certainly gory enough. Oh yes, this chapter is VERY gory. A big thank you goes out to Tikky, Saavik, and Saladin, our own Canadian Kamikaze Squad, who volunteered to be Susana's victims during her vacation in Toronto. (Also thank you to Steel, who nobly sacrificed herself in Chapter 7 for the noble cause of Susana's dinner.)
But on with the show, I'm sure you're curious how our northern Lecterphiles met their ends…
The empty warehouse sat in an industrial part of the city. No one bothered to pay it much heed. A few months earlier, the business in it had gone bankrupt. And Toronto was a large enough city that the woman in the tailored Chanel suit was not paid any real attention to as she picked the lock of the door and headed back to her car. A few people walking along the sidewalk saw her, but assumed she was a lawyer or official having something to do with the business's bankruptcy. So they watched her open up the large bay door and drive her car inside, but forgot about it right away.
Susana Alvarez Lecter drove the Honda into the empty warehouse. She was not alone. Two young girls were in the back seat, eying her fearfully as she got back into the car and pulled it forward. They were Teri and Reann, both inhabitants of Alberta, here visiting Reann's uncle in Toronto.
Reann was shorter than her compatriot – five foot four versus five foot nine. Both had brown hair, although Teri's was streaked with red. Both wore glasses and T-shirts. Both were bound with plastic handcuffs and looked frightened.
It had been rather easy to find victims. Susana knew well that her father had been the bete noire of the Internet since before she was born. Web pages and groups devoted to Hannibal Lecter were easy to find. She'd bought a laptop, set herself up with a free email account, and set about joining a few of them. After prowling through a few of them, she had found herself some victims. Teri and Reann had posted that they were excited to be visiting Toronto and had asked if anyone else on the list was going to be there. One other person had replied, and Susana already had her name and would be dealing with her next. Unfortunately for all three, Susana Alvarez Lecter was also in Toronto.
The two girls looked fearfully over the warehouse. It didn't look like anything other than an abandoned warehouse, a big empty space where the ghosts of old pallets were marked on the floor.
"What are you gonna do to us?" asked Reann. Her shoulders strained at her T shirt as she strained against the plastic strips binding her wrists. Susana had fastened them on both girls before putting them in the car.
"Weeeeell," Susana said thoughtfully, "you two…you two are going to help me send a message."
"If we do, will you let us go?" Reann asked.
Susana thought about it and nodded. They'd come down eventually, sure enough, and Reann had not specified that they would be alive when let go, so it wasn't lying, now was it? She grabbed each girl by an arm and marched them forward. Above them ran a ceiling beam. Fortunately, that was all she needed. They didn't fight her. She'd showed them the gun when she kidnapped them from the diner they'd arranged over the Internet to meet at, but it was still in the car. On the waistband of the skirt, however, was clipped Susana's Harpy. She didn't have it out, but they knew it was there, and so they were relatively easy to control.
She sat both girls under the beam and took out two ropes from her purse. Teri flinched when she saw them.
"What are those for?" she asked.
"Questions," Susana said brightly, "always questions. Curious little thing, aren't you? Pick a number between one and ten, girls. Then I'll tell you what it's for."
"Three," Reann said.
"Eight," Teri offered.
"Teri was closer," Susana smiled. "You win, Teri. So you get the choice. Hands or feet?"
"For what?" Teri asked, fright evident on her young face.
Susana chuckled and shook her head. "I'm afraid you'll just have to find out," she said calmly. Almost absently, she flipped back the edge of her jacket and put her hand on the Harpy. Teri flinched.
"Well?" Susana prompted. "Or shall I choose for you?"
Teri did not want to lose the one choice she had regarding what was almost assuredly her rapidly impending demise. She cast a look at Reann as if to ask for help. Then she cast an imploring look up at her calm, implacable captor. Seeing no sympathy in Susana's cruelly amused expression, she looked down at the floor.
After a moment or two, she reluctantly said, "Feet."
"All right," Susana said calmly, and squatted to tie the girl's ankles together. She heard Reann shift and turned to look at her. She waggled a finger.
"Tut-tut," Susana said. "You weren't trying to get away, were you, Reann?"
"No, no," Reann said quickly. "Not at all."
Susana tossed the end of the rope over the beam and firmed up her grip on it. A pulley would have been easier, but there wasn't one handy. And it wasn't terribly hard at all to hoist young Teri up into the air, hanging head-down in space. She whimpered once but that was all, squirming a bit to try and gain purchase on thin air.
With Teri incapacitated, Susana turned her attentions to her other prisoner. She swiftly bound Reann's wrists, and bound them to her waist. Then she threw the rope over the beam, and hoisted Reann into the air next to her compatriot. An indignant shriek escaped the shorter girl's lips as she swung, bent double.
"I know," Susana said comfortingly, "it's not very comfortable. But think of poor Teri for a moment, why don't you? She's hanging upside down." She crossed over back to the car and popped the trunk. From it, she carried over two circular free weights, the types that attach to barbells. T She stood between her two victims. Their cries and pleas bothered her not a bit as she threaded a rope through the center hole of each weight.
Then she tied the first weight to Reann's ankles. Fifty pounds of weight sufficed to prevent her from kicking. Reann let out a pained grunt, glaring at Susana with pained eyes. The other weight was neatly tied around her neck. Reann swung back and forth slowly, her muscles screaming against the weight. The weight on her neck pressed against the back of her neck, so it did not choke her, but it made her quite miserable.
"Please," she husked. "Don't hurt us. We never did anything to you. If you let us go, we won't tell anyone…not me or her…we won't go to the police,…"
Susana shrugged. "That's true, I suppose," she said without much interest. "Well, you know, if this was a friend of mine doing this, he'd be asking you if you believed in God about now." She crossed back to the car and took a final item from the trunk. When she walked back to the bound girls, her arm was behind her back and her eyes sparkled with faux good humor.
"Now Teri," she said in tones of crocodile sympathy, "I'm sure you must be jealous of all the attention your friend got there."
The blood had already begun to rush to Teri's head as she was suspended upside down, but she was still aware enough to shake her head as Susana approached. She tried to flinch away, but there was nowhere to go. A terrible knowledge filled her eyes.
From behind her back Susana produced a hammer. Teri shrieked in terror when she saw it and tried to dodge out of the way as best she could. Like a bizarre carnival game, Susana tried to hit her victim with the hammer and Teri tried to swing herself away from her tormentor. The dull whock of the hammer hitting flesh and bone was counterpointed by the girl's screams. It was a game Susana ended up winning. Eventually, Teri hung limp and dead from the beam.
Reann tried to flinch herself when Susana drew nearer. It was difficult to flinch with a fifty-pound weight around her neck and another on her ankles, but still she flinched. Susana smiled prettily.
"Oh no, don't be scared," she told the young Canadian. "I'm not going to use the hammer on you. That's not part of your fate." She reached into her jacket pocket and took out a piece of paper. Printed on it was a picture that duplicated the fate of the two girls. "Looks like all you do is hang there until you die, i Well, that's harsh." She reached up to the rope around Reann's neck and deftly flipped the knot. Slowly, the slipknot around the girl's neck began to tighten. Reann squirmed uncomfortably, her face a mask of misery. Susana could see the terrible knowledge of her impending death in her eyes.
"The more you squirm," Susana said informatively, "the quicker it tightens." She smiled coldly. "But I'm afraid my schedule's too full to watch you. If you're still alive when I get back, let me know."
Reann turned her head as much as the weight would allow. Her breathing was labored as the weight hanging from the noose around her neck began to slowly tighten. The image of Susana getting back in the car was slowly beginning to be covered with white sparkles dancing in the corner of her vision. By the time Susana backed the car out of the warehouse and was back on the street, Reann had already lost consciousness.
Susana headed back to the diner in which she had first met the two. The third should be there now: she had to work and had arrived there later. The diner was busy, with dishes clanking and voices creating a din. That was good: people would be less likely to pay attention to her. Calmly, she looked around.
She spotted a girl sitting by herself in a booth, looking around at people as they entered the diner. She was tall – taller than Susana – and had brown hair and gray eyes. Her body language made it clear she was waiting for someone. Susana walked up to her booth and smiled.
"Hi," she smiled. "Are you Meagan?"
The girl nodded. "And you are…,"
"Mary," Susana supplied. "Mary Surratt, from the list." She sat down across from the girl in the booth.
"I wonder where the others are," Meagan said thoughtfully. Susana smiled.
"Hanging out, actually. I had something I wanted to show them. Something Lecter-related."
Susana watched the young woman's eyes light up. For a moment she wondered why it was so many people were so endlessly fascinated with her father. Conspiracy theories, web pages, Ebay auctions of his letters and works. It annoyed her to some extent: everyone considered him some type of monster, not the loving father he had been to her.
"Can I see it too?" Meagan asked animatedly. "What is it?"
"Kind of a secret," Susana allowed. "I'm not supposed to have it here, you know? But yes, if you'd like, I'll take you to see it."
Meagan appeared to be considering it. Susana smiled patiently and waited. Eventually, the younger woman nodded. "OK," she said. And so it went. The ride back to the warehouse was short, and Susana only let on a few hints about her supposed piece of Lecter memorabilia. Just enough to keep Meagan's interest piqued. This time Susana simply drove right into the warehouse. She'd left the door open – the girls were out of sight of the door.
Meagan saw the corpses of the other two girls swinging slowly in space. She stared at them in horror for just a moment, realizing just what had happened. Her jaw hung slightly open, her gray eyes wide with shock. Susana quickly crossed around in front of the car. Meagan turned to flee, to run as fast as she could away from the two dead girls swinging from the beam. But just as she shook off her horror and fear and prepared to run, Susana's hand clamped down onto her upper arm.
Binding the young woman took only a moment or two, and then Susana had to figure out what she was doing next. This just wasn't her style of killing, but he wouldn't do what she wanted him to unless he got his sign. And Susana had learned to adapt to her circumstances.
Here you go, Luke, she thought. Here's your sign.
"Let me go," Meagan implored. "What are you doing?"
Susana grabbed the collar of the young woman's jacket and hauled her over to a pole supporting the beam from which Reann and Teri were suspended. She didn't answer until she had tied a rope around Meagan's chest to the pole.
"Sending a message," she said smoothly. Then she walked across the room to a table and took a plastic bag from it. The plastic bag bore the insignia of a Buffalo medical-supplies company on it. From this, Susana took a thicker plastic bag, a tube, and a needle. She walked back, her heels clicking ominously against the concrete floor, and squatted behind Meagan.
Carefully, she cut a small piece away from the jacket and the shirt beneath it. A small square of Meagan's skin was visible, and Susana could see a short section of her spine. Perfect. She did not speak as she prepared the needle and tubing. The girl let out a grunt of pain as Susana sank the needle carefully between the vertebrae of her spine. Then Susana stood up and walked around to face the girl, wiping her hands as she did.
"I know that hurt a little," she said, "but you'll thank me for it pretty soon. That's an epidural, just like they give pregnant women in the hospital. But it's higher up the spine, so it'll block off pretty much everything below the shoulders."
She took four triangular bandages and wrapped them loosely around each of Meagan's limbs. In each she inserted a drumstick she had bought at a music store downtown. Turning the drumsticks around and around, she tightened down the tourniquets until she judged that the blood flow had been cut off.
While the epidural took effect, Susana prepared the rest of her equipment. She glanced at the picture she had printed off a web page and thought. Arms four inches above the elbows – very high – but the feet were at mid-calf. Ah well. She hoped he appreciated her sticking to this stupid picture. She quickly removed her suit – it was a brand new suit she'd bought at the Versace outlet and she didn't want to get blood on it.
When she walked back, Meagan began to scream through the gag stuffed in her mouth. Susana tilted her head and eyed her, wondering if she was screaming at the sight of a woman in her underwear or screaming at the sight of the large chainsaw in her hands.
"Oh, don't worry," she said reassuringly. "I'm not a pervert, I'm not going to do anything like that to you. I just don't want to get blood on my clothes. Brand new, you know."
It didn't seem to be much reassurance. The chainsaw started on the second try. Susana gunned the engine a few times and thought back to an amusingly bad horror movie she'd seen on cable TV while she relaxed in the suite. All I need now is tribal paint, she thought, and then she brought the chainsaw down.
The whirring teeth cut easily enough through the jacket and shirt and the underlying flesh. It took a bit more effort for Susana to get through the bone. Humerus, she thought, her med-school days harkening in her mind as she carried out her grisly task. Greater tubercle, lesser tubercle, deltoid tuberosity. And then the chainsaw was through. Susana pulled it away before the blade began to cut into her ribcage. The severed arm thudded to the ground.
The other arm went much the same way, and then Susana brought the chainsaw down on Meagan's feet halfway above the ankles. She gathered up the severed limbs and stacked them neatly in a box near the mutilated woman. Meagan's color was an ashy gray; the epidural had prevented her from feeling pain, but she had just seen her four limbs cut off. Emotional shock, Susana supposed. Now for the final touch – the touch that would make this her murder, not just a carbon copy of some old woodcut.
She threw a rope over the beam far over Meagan's head and lowered one end down to the tourniquets. It was simple to tie knots in the rope and slip the knurled heads of the drumsticks into the knots. She tugged on the rope experimentally and then yanked the other end down hard, so that the tourniquets were held fast.
One hand held the rope. The other hand dug the rag stuffed in Meagan's mouth out. Susana replaced it with the end of the rope and squatted to look her victim squarely in the eye. Wide gray eyes met cool maroon ones.
"Now Meagan," she said calmly, "the only thing holding on those tourniquets is the rope in your teeth. Hold on very very tight to that rope, okay?"
Meagan was trembling. But Susana's words echoed in some corner of her tortured mind, for she nodded.
"Good," Susana continued. "Because when you let go, the tourniquets are going to come loose. And then you'll exsanguinate. Do you know what that means?"
Another nod.
"Good girl," Susana said, and strolled casually over to the table on which she had left her suit. She wiped the blood off her face with a towel and dressed.
"I have a few things to do," she explained, "so I'm going to get those done. I'll be calling someone to come help you, but they probably won't be here for a while. They're coming from Washington, DC, after all. So hold onto that rope and think pleasant thoughts."
An agonized groan came from behind her as she stepped back into the car. Susana chuckled. She wondered if the girl might actually last until help came. Stranger things had happened. It all depended on how much she wanted to live.
The other things she had to do did take Susana some time. She gathered up her bags and the corpse of Shawn Irons from her suite. The corpse went back to the warehouse. The bags stayed in the car. She headed for Le Royal Meridien King Edward, where her reservation in the name Bonnie Heady was waiting. The suite was quite nice. Anything at all would have been a comedown after the fantastic luxury of the huge suite at the Four Seasons, but this would do quite nicely.
She made a phone call to her attorneys in the States. First her criminal defense attorney, who squawked at her to give herself up before she got herself in worse trouble. What could be worse than facing capital charges of which she would assuredly be convicted he did not specify, and Susana got bored rather quickly and hung up after telling him to do what he could do delay things. Then a call to another attorney she had hired for some private business. She got him on his cell phone, and he assured her that he had brought up to Toronto the things she had asked him to bring up.
Then she returned to the warehouse for a fourth time, but did not go inside. She could hear moans from inside. That rope must be getting mighty heavy about now, eh? Instead, she simply crossed the street to a nearby pay phone. Her purse was full of Canadian quarters after visiting the Royal Bank. She had use for them.
…
Lisa Starling was in her office at Quantico, going over some police reports and trying to ignore the misgivings in her gut. So far, nothing had been heard from Susana. She knew it couldn't last. It wasn't her cousin's style.
But Lisa had work she had to do anyway. It is an axiom of Behavioral Sciences that there are anywhere from two to three hundred serial killers at work in the United States at any one time. Right now, on Lisa's desk were cases from Seattle, New York City, and one here in DC. This last one bothered her the most. Police departments in northern Virginia and metro DC had found the dumped corpses of several young women. All had undergone horrible tortures before their deaths. The tortures didn't match up to each other per se. Some had been cut up. Some had been beaten with blunt instruments. Some had been burned. This last one had horrible third-degree burns, but only on the head. Lisa was trying to figure out if it was the same person doing all of them or not. He seemed to be reusing the dump sites, and the torments he put his victims through seemed to be a common point, even if what he did to them didn't count.
It served to keep her mind off the fact that her cousin was free. That bothered Lisa Starling a great deal. She knew very well what her cousin was capable of. Lisa believed that the time immediately after her cousin's escape would be calm, but it would just be the eye of the storm. Susana would find somewhere to hole up, regain her strength, get the things she wanted. But once she was satisfied, there would be hell to pay.
The phone rang. Lisa picked it up. "FBI, Agent Starling," she said automatically.
The voice at the other end chilled Lisa's blood. "Well, Cousin Lisa! I declare, how are you?"
The crime-scene photos fluttered to the ground, immediately forgotten. Lisa put one hand on her Glock and turned around, half expecting Susana to be down the hall in the subterranean corridors of the FBI.
"Susana?' she asked.
"That's me," Susana Alvarez Lecter said airily. "We ain't talked in a while." The accent clicked off with the efficiency of a light switch. I hate how she does that, Lisa thought. "I do want to say thank you for the radio. It was very kind of you not to forget me while I was imprisoned."
"Tell me where you are, Susana," Lisa said firmly.
"To give myself up?"
"Yes," Lisa said. "It'll go easier if you do, we've got people tracking you--,"
"We-hell," Susana said calmly. "Give myself up to the FBI. Gee Whitakers, Cousin Lisa, that sure is hard to decide. There I've got a five by nine cell, life in ad seg, and a trial which'll end in a death sentence on my head. Here, I've got shopping, fine dining, a suite the size of a house, the whole nine yards. Golly gee, whichever would you go for, Cousin Lisa?"
"You know we're tracing this call," Lisa said grimly.
"I know. Wouldn't expect any less out of you, Cousin Lisa. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Catch me if you can."
Lisa sighed. "I caught you once," she said. "I'll do it again."
"You shore did, Cousin Lisa Lee. You're an honest-to-God dee-tective. You know, I was in the Chanel boutique today – it's one of the biggest in the world here, you know – and I saw the cutest little suit. Thought of you right away, but I didn't know your size." She chuckled. "Tell you what. I know you'll be here shortly, as soon as you can trace this call and get on a plane. Drop by, I'll leave them your name."
"Sounds good," Lisa said tightly. "I'll wear it at your trial."
"Now there's an idle threat, Lisa Starling. Well, I declare, you done gone and lost your manners since you moved to the big city and started working for the FBI. Y'all don't treat your kin like that. You ain't got enough to go round, now do you?"
Lisa reached for her computer keyboard and clicked on the 'Call Trace' icon. The pointer hourglassed on her. She tilted her head curiously: normally it was immediate. On the other end of the line, Susana continued.
"I know you probably aren't as busy as you were since you caught me," she said. Lisa smiled to herself: it wasn't true. She had plenty of work to do. "So I tell you what, Cousin Lisa. I done gone and did somethin' I wantcha to see. Once you trace the call, come on up and have a gander yourself."
Lisa closed her eyes and felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Susana had killed again. She knew it. Oh God, who did you kill and why?
"See you when you get here," Susana said cheerily, and hung up.
The call tracer program finally came back. Lisa stared at the display tensely, feeling nervous. Susana had said come on up here, and so she wasn't surprised when the call tracer came back.
BELL CANADA
416-909-7510
PAYPHONE
TORONTO ONT
Lisa Starling got up from her desk and ran for Chief Quincy's office.
…
Susana pressed the switch on the payphone and dropped in another quarter. She dialed another number and waited for a moment until it rang. A voice answered.
"Toronto Sun," the voice said importantly.
"Hello," Susana said sweetly. "You might want to send a reporter down to Dufferin Street." She glanced across the street and gave the voice the number of the warehouse. "There's something you ought to see here."
"What is it?" the voice asked.
"Nothing much," Susana said lightly. "Just three dead girls." She could hear the person on the other end scrabbling for a pen and paper.
"Three dead girls? Can you tell us anything about them? Have you called the police?"
"No police," Susana admitted. "Well…sort of. As for what I can tell you about them…you'll just have to see."
She hung up the phone and strolled back to her car. As she headed back to the King Edward, she popped in a Bach CD. She smiled lightly. Things were going well. She felt much better. Lisa would be here soon, and Luke would have his sign.