Please God don't let me be too late.
Those thoughts ran through the brain of Agent Laura Miehns, commander of the HRT and current bodyguard of Lisa Starling, as she pulled into the parking lot of the complex. She'd known this was where Lisa had to be headed, even though she hadn't answered her phone. The real question was why. Had Graham simply had a heart attack or something? Or was it something darker? Something five foot four and responsible for the deaths of most of the HRT?
It seemed somehow darkly proper that it was the second. Susana was here. She could sense the killer's mocking presence. Laura determined to bring her down. She already owed for the HRT personnel she had killed. If Susana Alvarez laid a finger on Lisa Starling's head while she was Laura's responsibility….
As Lisa had fifteen minutes earlier, Agent Miehns sprinted into the lobby and ran for the stairwell door. A few people glanced at her as she went, but she paid them no heed. The pistol was heavy and comforting in her hand as she charged up the stairs, gun before her. At the metal door with a large 4 painted on it, she grabbed the knob, turned, and pointed her weapon to and fro down the hallway.
Graham's door was shut, but not locked. Laura ran inside. It would contaminate the crime scene, but there were more important things. Like Lisa and Graham's lives. No one in the living room. She checked the kitchen. Same deal. The bathroom and the bedroom were empty. Where the hell did they go? The train had only delayed her by five minutes, seven tops.
Laura Miehns was HRT, not Behavioral Sciences, and she knew a lot about escaping perps. It would be possible for Susana Alvarez Lecter to have fled the scene in five minutes, her and the helper that Lisa and Graham had theorized that she had. But neither Lisa nor Graham was around, which meant that Susana and her accomplice probably had them too. There was no way at all that two people could get two hostages, one of them 90, down four flights of stairs in five minutes.
Therefore, they were probably still around. She decided to see if any of the old people living here had seen or heard anything. One never knew. She ran up to the next door and banged on it.
"Open up! This is the FBI! Open the door, please."
She paused for a moment and waited, her ear cocked. The thick steel door blocked all sound. She did not hear anything on the other side. She did not hear Susana Alvarez Lecter's hushed conversation with Luke, nor did she hear Lisa being dragged to the back bedroom.
Susana waited for several moments before answering. When she did, her voice was high and cracked. It was a fairly good imitation of an old woman's voice. If the cop on the other side of the door knew Mrs. Moore's voice, she was sunk. Susana thought the odds were pretty good that she would not, though.
"Just a moment, dearie," Susana said. "I'm coming. I can't move as fast as I used to." Her mind spun, trying to figure out what to do next. She had a gun in her bag, but she knew she couldn't shoot through the steel door. Besides, the gunfire would get one of these old coots to call the cops, if the one outside hadn't called them already. She didn't need that much time to deal with Lisa – it was a pretty simple thing she had planned.
"Ma'am, I need to talk to you. I'm with the FBI. My name is Laura Miehns."
"Ooooh, is it now?" Susana asked, meaning to delay. "I'm coming, I'm coming." She paused for a moment or two, so it would seem like it had been an afterthought.
"Are you here about the awful ruckus next door?" Susana queried in her old-lady voice.
On the other side of the door, Laura Miehns clenched her fists. Thank God, she thought.
"Yes, ma'am, I am. Did you see anything or hear anything?"
"Oh yes," Susana said, taking another step towards the door. She wanted the agent to think she was an old woman hobbling towards the door. What she would do when she got there was another story; she hadn't decided yet. She pulled her gun and checked it – locked and cocked.
"What can you tell me about it?" Miehns asked.
"Weeeelll," Susana dithered. "I saw them drive up outside. They had a bright red van, you know, and it was blaring music. That loud rock music that kids listen to these days, you know. I could hear it from up here! I told that nice Mr. Graham from next door, you know, he used to work for the FBI years and years ago. Do you know him?"
Great, Laura Miehns thought on the other side of the door, just what I need. An old woman who wants to talk.
"Yes, I do, ma'am," she said. "Can you open the door, please?"
The old woman sounded irked. "I'm coming. When you get to be my age you'll see yourself. I use a walker, you know. Anyway, this red van drove up and two people got out. And I just thought it was so awfully rude to be playing their music that loud. And a man and a woman got out and came in the building, you know. And then I didn't think anything more about it, I just sat down to watch TV and have a nice cup of tea. Do you like tea, dear?"
"Yes, ma'am, tea's great. Can you go on about what you saw?"
"All right, dearie. I heard people come upstairs and knock on Mr. Graham's door, maybe about ten minutes later. My TV show was already on, but they were loud in the hall and I could hear them. It gets so echoey out in the hall and people don't realize that we can hear you in here! And it's loud! And they opened up Mr. Graham's apartment and there was this big noise and I heard them fighting and I thought Oh that poor Mr. Graham." Susana glanced over at poor Mr. Graham, bleeding not five feet away from him. His eyes were growing misty.
"And they made a tremendous racket on the stairs and I wanted to call the police, but I can't move so fast anymore, I think I told you. So I went to the window and I watched them come out the door. And they got in the van, all three of them. And this blonde girl came up, I think she's been here before. She and Mr. Graham are doing something." Her tone indicated disapproval.
Agent Miehns did not care anymore about the old biddy coming to the door. This was too good.
"Go on, ma'am," she urged, tensing her muscles.
"And the woman got out of the van and they wrestled and then they got the blonde woman in the van. And they drove off! With that rock music playing. And I was about to call the police and then you showed up."
Must've been to cover the noise, Laura Miehns thought. Damn, I must've missed them by only a minute or so. Damn that train!
"Did you happen to get the license number of the van, ma'am?" she panted eagerly. Please. Be nosy.
"Why, yes I did." She heard the old woman walk over to a table and rustle a paper. "AZT 3TC, it was. Virginia tags."
Laura Miehns's first concern was Lisa, her charge. Finding her was paramount. So she might be forgiven the fact that she did not question the old woman further.
"Thank you, ma'am," she said. "You've been very helpful." She headed for the ground floor again. As she went, she called in on her cell phone for an immediate APB on the red van. The message was swiftly communicated out to the local and state police departments. The dragnet to find and recover Lisa Starling and Will Graham was drawn.
Susana Alvarez Lecter stepped back from the door with satisfaction. They'd be looking for the van, and they'd find it. Well, that was why it was rude to cut people off in traffic. She wondered if the police would arrest them or shoot them or what when they found it. She looked over at Will Graham bound to the table, bleeding his life away. She tilted her head at him and grinned. Still using the old-lady voice, she spoke.
"Well now, there won't be any cavalry for the nice Mr. Graham, now will there be dearie?" Then, in her own voice, she continued. "But I only have one more thing to do to you, Mr. Graham. Then it's Lisa's turn."
Will let out an agonized groan.
…
Lisa Starling tensed. The man in back of her was puttering around, doing something. She could hear him pick up a plastic vial. Then a needle stung her arm. She winced. She didn't this guy at all. There was something disturbing about him. It was hard to pick up on, but she could pick up an unmistakable psychic scent of wrongness from him.
Of course, it could just be that she was helpless around him in a bedroom, and the only thing that might save her was her own serial-killer cousin.
"So you're the one who caught Susana," he said easily. "Put her in prison. In irons. How could you do that to her?"
Lisa could not reply for the washcloth stuffed in her mouth. So she merely thought, Because she's a cold-blooded murderer.
"I suppose I should thank you, though. You were merely the instrument of God. That's something I understand, Agent Starling. Susana had to be imprisoned so that she could meet me, and so that she could be freed. Many people come to God in prison, you know. Susana hasn't professed faith yet, but she will. I know she will."
A bizarre feeling began to spread throughout Lisa's body. Her muscles were slowly turning to water, relaxing involuntarily. It started in her arm, where she had received the shot, and began to spread out. She tried to concentrate on her right hand. It was still there; her nerves worked perfectly well. She could feel the wooden back of the chair. But when she commanded her fingers to move, they refused.
Luke bent her forward as easily as a rag doll and removed the cuffs. The muscles of her stomach slackened too, refusing to hold her up. But she was as conscious and aware as ever, and the first tricklings of real fear began to invade Lisa's mind. She knew that she should try to fight. Once Susana got in here, God only knew what would happen to her. But her body simply would not respond. It was frightening. More than frightening, it was terrifying.
Luke pulled the tape from her lips and yanked out the washcloth. The taste of his fingers was unpleasant. By now, the spreading paralysis had slipped up Lisa's neck to the throat. She willed her jaw to close on his fingers with all her might. It remained slack and loose.
Oh good Christ what did they do to me?
He lifted her to the bed and laid her on it carefully, tipping her head back and opening her jaw. He looked dubiously at her, and through her fear she thought he was not familiar with what he was doing. She was completely paralyzed, her body refusing to respond to any command her panicked mind sent. But she was awake and aware, and she could feel the sheets of Mrs. Moore's bed under her skin. A mind trapped in a useless body. Even her eyes refused to focus in on Luke: her image of him was slightly blurred. She memorized what she could: dishwater blonde hair, can't make out eye color, about six feet, maybe a hundred and seventy, a hundred and eighty, very strong….
He turned away and rummaged for something. It was then that Lisa made a horrible discovery about what her body would no longer do. It wouldn't breathe. Her lungs, which had always drawn breath for most of her life without any conscious thought by her, refused to move. She lay completely motionless on the bed. All of her will was focused on forcing her diaphragm to move, to draw in air, but it would not. The screaming of her brain to move the muscle was simply ignored.
Oh God. OhGodOhGodOhGod. I'm going to die.
Then Luke turned around, something in his hand. As he approached her, she was able to see what it was. A plastic bulb attached to a mask. He placed the mask over Lisa's mouth and nose and squeezed the bulb. Air rushed through the mask and inflated her lungs. Lisa Starling, who was a regular watcher of TV medical dramas, realized that she was being bagged.
"Are you thinking of your immortal soul?" Luke asked above her. "Are you willing to die for your faith?"
At first she didn't understand the question and couldn't have answered anyway. Her mind whirled in panic. She was completely paralyzed, couldn't breathe, and her life was in the hands of a serial killer. His eyes glowed down at her. There was something much more frightening than even her cousin's there. For the most part – Will Graham's murder aside – Susana was fairly rational. In Luke Taylor's pale blue eyes she saw something insane. More than his words, his eyes told her that he would kill her in a heartbeat and glory in it. But then two voices from the recent past spoke up in her mind.
Will in the park, tapping the Toronto crime scene photos: Look for the heretic, Starling. Look for someone murdering martyr-style. Find them, and you'll find Dr. Lecter.
Kelly McNeely, exhausted and bitter as Lisa got in one last question before she was taken back home: I sent in some people from the jail ministry, but she wouldn't talk to them.
She talked to one of them, Lisa Starling thought. She talked to you, didn't she? McNeely must've forgotten. You're her accomplice, and you're my DC torture killer, aren't you? But now I know you're part of the jail ministry at Alexandria Detention Center. Jeez, can't believe I didn't see it before, they probably let you go anywhere you want. They probably let you right up to her cell, hell, maybe right INTO her cell, where they let you talk in private.
Fat lot of good it'll do me now.
Luke Taylor grinned ecstatically at the sinner below him. Sinner, that made sense. Susana did not want her martyred. Luke was trying to figure out if that was because she was Susana's only relative, or if it was a means of punishing Lisa, by letting her die a sinner and burn in the everlasting flames of hell. But perhaps Susana had come around and would martyr her cousin herself. Whatever she had planned, he looked forward to seeing it.
And this…this was so fitting. He would have to get her to teach him how to do this. Norcuron, she had told him. He did not know how to get drugs like this, but it had to be possible. She'd done it. And he needed to know how much. A martyr restrained like this was like martyrs of old. There were no more tedious tears and begging and all that. Lisa's face was slack and placid. The way the martyrs in the woodcuts had been. Accepting of her fate. Even better, he knew the brain behind that calm face was in full-out panic mode. She was awake, aware, and conscious. Susana would have to teach him how to use it. He had so many ideas.
Experimentally, he stopped squeezing the bag that gave Lisa air. He let her hang for perhaps thirty seconds or so, grinning down at her as he did so. There was no sign of fear at all, not a single pleading word. She was a puppet with her strings cut. A plaything. Her punishment for her sins was to fall into his hands. Playfully, Luke squeezed the bag several times in rapid succession, making Lisa pant.
Power, he thought. He had complete power over her, at least for the time being. It was absolutely dizzying. Anything he wanted to do to her, he could. Anything at all. And his mind whirled with ideas. Susana would probably indulge herself tormenting Graham after she was done with the FBI agent at the door. Luke wondered if she would simply shoot her or what. But he had time for mischief of his own.
He leaned over her and studied her face intently. It was not so different from Susana's, he thought. The hair and eyes were different, but the planes of her face were not that dissimilar. As he studied his plaything, he tried to envision her with reddish-brown hair and maroon eyes. High cheekbones, delicate features. He wondered how she ever made it as an FBI agent, if people took her seriously. Then again, he amended, Susana had those same delicate features, and just look at the work she had done. Those martyrs up in Toronto. Such beautiful work.
He lifted the mask away from her face and studied the blank blue orbs below him. He supposed she was wondering what he was doing. Her face gave away nothing. No indication at all that there was anyone home in those eyes. He wondered if this would be boring, since there was no way for the brain underneath to communicate its despair and horror. Then, he hovered his face barely a half inch over hers.
Slowly, his tongue extended out from his mouth. It passed Lisa's lips and touched her teeth, probing at them. He slapped his tongue against hers, enjoying the sheer ability to do anything he wanted at all to her. She remained slack and motionless. He lifted his head, drawing the tip of his tongue up the roof of her mouth at he went. No reaction at all. He laughed in spite of himself and debated doing it again.
Lisa Starling was unable to express her disgust as the serial killer above her slid his tongue in her mouth. Her ability to vomit, as well as her ability to move any other muscle, was offline. Her mind screamed as his tongue probed the inside of her mouth. Was this what Susana had in mind for her? To be so completely helpless at the hands of this thing keeping her alive? Was he going to want anything…else?
She showed no outward reaction. The Norcuron still held her firmly in its grip. Mentally, she narrowed her eyes at him and thought Someday, I will kill you slowly for that. She tried not to think about what might happen to her now to stop this lovely plan.
He simply retreated back to his normal stance over her and continued squeezing the bag. Susana strolled in a moment later and glanced over Lisa calmly. Upon seeing her, Lisa Starling felt an emotion she never would have before connected with Susana Alvarez Lecter: gratitude. Susana laid down some items on Mrs. Moore's nightstand, then laid down a piece of paper next to Lisa. Turning her head to look at it wasn't an option. How odd it seemed: the very idea of motion was an impossibility for her. Susana jabbed a hypodermic needle into the side of Lisa's face and injected a cool liquid. Then another on the other side. Lisa blanched and wondered what her cousin had just given her.
Working calmly, humming something under her breath, Susana Alvarez Lecter clipped something to Lisa's earlobe. She leaned a small electronic device by Lisa's head, so that she could easily see it. Lisa could hear a repeated beep coming from the device. Susana then took a surgical marker and carefully drew a few lines on Lisa's face. She studied the paper, then Lisa's face again.
"How's the patient?" Susana asked calmly.
"She's fine," Luke assured her.
"Good. Let me scrub, and I'll be right in."
No Susana don't leave me with this guy! Lisa Starling thought. She heard water running in the bathroom for several minutes. Above her, Luke squeezed the bag that kept her alive. He seemed to have satisfied himself. Or perhaps he didn't want Susana to see. Lisa deemed that more likely.
Susana came back, gloved and masked. Lisa would've flinched if flinching was a remote possibility for her.
She's going to do me like Graham. She won't kill me, but she might scar me.
"Well, hello, Lisa," Susana said. "You've already been administered anesthetics and paralytics, as you probably noticed. Norcuron, generic name vecuronium. Complete paralysis, as you noticed. But don't worry…it'll wear off soon."
She bent her head down to whatever piece of paper she had placed by Lisa's head. Lisa would have given a great deal to know what was on the paper. Susana was concentrating on it with a great deal of effort.
"This is awfully different from the last time we met, Lisa," Susana said chattily. "Well, you could move then, for one thing. Also, you were arresting me…putting me in jail."
Her face quirked just a bit. The beeping sound of the device clipped to Lisa's ear quickened as her heart began to pound. Will had been right. Prison had changed Susana.
"The jail was a very trying experience for me," Susana said matter-of-factly. She raised her right hand in the air. Something silver gleamed from it. "I suppose if you wanted to make me miserable, Lisa, you found the way."
Lisa Starling lay helplessly, unable to express herself except through the beeping of the device attached to her ear. She could neither beg nor move. She could not even breathe herself. She was sorry that she would end up as Susana's sixth profiler victim. She was sorry for Will. She couldn't help but wonder if it might have been better if she had never tracked down Susana in the first place. It had brought her glory, but now an old man was dead at Susana's hands, and she was next. In a way, it was crazily appropriate – the two profilers who caught Dr. Lecter going down together.
"You might say prison scarred me, Lisa," Susana Alvarez Lecter said thinly.
The gleaming scalpel descended.