PART 3
Graham woke the next morning, sprawled across his bed, still in last night's shorts and rumpled t-shirt. His head was pounding and he wanted water desperately. He rolled over, thinking he might risk trying to get up, and sent the now empty bottle beside him crashing to the floor.
"Hell," he muttered. That would be a bitch to clean up when he finally decided he could move again.
Will Graham was far too familiar with hangovers. He had begun almost every day of the past 10 years with one. He had long since given up any notion he might have had that the alcohol could make him forget - even for awhile - but passing out cold did seem to keep the nightmares at bay.
"Might as well get this over with," he muttered as he gingerly sat up and moved his legs cautiously over the side of the bed. He sat still for a moment, letting himself adjust to the notion of sitting up and then stood slowly. That accomplished, he made his way around the bed in a wide arc, attempting to avoid the minefield of shattered glass and heading for the door to the hallway.
The sluggish journey was interrupted after only a few steps. He let out a surprised yelp as he stepped on one of the shards of glass from the broken liquor bottle.
"Dammit!"
His injured foot came up, leg bending back at the knee, so that he could reach to remove the glass. He held the pose for another moment, regarding the deep slash along his heel, and then hobbled down the hall to the kitchen, leaving a trail of blood along the hallway to mark his progress.
Standing in front of the open refrigerator, he finished a third of the bottled water in one gulp before turning to the sink. The dish towel would do. Graham wrapped it loosely around his foot, and shuffled into the living room. Once there, he lowered himself into a chair facing the corner.
He stared at the waste can, the thick files peeking up over the edge. He could ignore them or give in and finish what he had started the night before. Graham looked away, his gaze wandering to the hallway and fixing on the darkening trail of red along the floor.
You see that? That's what you get when you go picking through shit you have no business being in the middle of! Toss Jack's goddam files in the dumpster and take the boat out, or you can bet that's not the last blood you'll see before this is over.
He understood that he should take this advice, but was not in the mood to debate his better judgment this morning. He had started this, and he knew he would finish at least this part of it now. Why not just do it and get it over with?
Are you sure you need to know, Will? Are you ready for what this will cost?
He downed the last of the water and got up, trading the empty bottle for the files in the waste can. Starling's file and the tape, he dropped to the floor beside the chair, and then settled back with Lecter's file in his lap.
Let's see what you've been up to, Doctor...
After several hours, he closed the folder with a heavy sigh. He had gone through it cover to cover, even though most of the early information was still as familiar to him as it had been when he wrote the reports 15 years before.
Though undeniably impressive – God might still be ahead, Doctor, but you're sure as hell giving him a run for his money, aren't you? – the newer additions to Lecter's resume were not so intriguing to Graham as his correspondence with Clarice Starling.
It was obvious that something Lecter saw in Starling had captured his imagination. His letters to her were not simply for the purpose of distressing her, as was the majority of his more personal correspondence. How many people, he wondered, did Lecter actually want to have any kind of legitimate dialogue with?
I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.
"How did it feel to know he held you in such high regard, Starling?" His whisper was like a scream in the silent room. "I know it didn't frighten you as much as it should have, but did it please you, I wonder? Could you acknowledge it, if it did?"
I have windows.
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be again before the year 2000. (I have no intention of telling you the time and how high it is.) But I expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.
Clarice.
Some of our stars are the same? Jesus! That sounded almost... he shuddered as he realized that the word he was reaching for was romantic. Lecter? Was that possible? The notion of romance and Hannibal Lecter coexisting even in the furthest reaches of the imagination struck Graham as something far beyond absurd, yet he was sure it was more than just whimsy on the Doctor's part. Hannibal Lecter never struck without at least an idea that he might hit his mark.
"This one must have messed with your head pretty good," he muttered. At least he hoped it had. He was not yet capable of truly acknowledging the possibility that she hadn't been disturbed by the thing at all.
As disconcerting as that first letter to Starling had been, the more recent ones were even more confounding in their own way. A cursory reading of the first might have seemed to be just another of the Doctor's mind games... if you didn't make it far enough, or pay close enough attention.
Now I will show you a quality you have that will help you: You are not blinded by tears, you have the onions to read on.
Here's an exercise you might find useful. I want you physically to do this with me...
The spectacle of Lecter actually attempting to comfort anyone was as alien to Graham as anything he could even begin to imagine... not to mention the notion that he might actually have the desire to do so.
You can be as strong as you wish to be.
You are a warrior, Clarice. The enemy is dead, the baby safe. You are a warrior.
Admiration? Did he have the cacapity?
The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver.
Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.
Graham shook his head and sat for a long moment before moving on to the last brief note.
Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you're the answer to Samson's riddle: You are the honey in the lion.
"Well, I'll be a sonofabitch."
Clarice Starling might actually be one of Lecter's few weaknesses.
The question Will had to answer now was so simple, but almost too awful to consider. It was the same question he'd flirted with last night; the one that drew him back to the files this morning; the one that Jack Crawford had been too afraid even to consider, let alone ask directly...
If Hannibal Lecter had a weakness for Starling - and it seemed obvious that he did - did she have a weakness for him as well?
Why is that so important for you to know?
"You know damn fucking well why it's so fucking important!" he screamed into the silence.
"Do you know how you caught me, Will?"
Alright, time to get a grip.
He took several deep breaths and let his head hang forward. Suddenly, he leaped up, pushing Lecter's file from his lap as though he'd just realized it was there for the first time.
"Godammit!"
Damn Jack Crawford straight to hell!
And damn that fucking protege of his, too!
How did she do it? How did she just stroll in and stare down the one thing that frightened him more than he could even comprehend? The bitch didn't even have the decency to blink at the biggest, baddest boogeyman in Will's closet, and Crawford had come asking him to save her.
It had taken him close to a dozen years – not to mention an ocean of tequila – to numb himself enough so that he didn't try to peek at what was behind that damn door any longer, and Jack just waltzed right in and flung the thing wide open again without one thought as to what the damage might be.
"Jesus, Jack! Couldn't you have just let it die? You might as well have come in here and put a gun to my head." A heavy sigh escaped him. "No, that was never your style, was it? Way too direct for you. Hell, if you did it that way, you might actually have had to admit that your motives weren't so noble, after all."
It certainly wouldn't do for the benevolent leader to have to look at the fact that he was willing to sacrifice everyone but himself to his stubborn vendetta.
Graham spat out a dry laugh.
"I wonder if you saw the irony when you read Starling's reports, Jack? Did you stop, even for a second, to ask yourself how many lambs you were willing to send to slaughter?"
He was pacing now, muttering under his breath.
Fuck this!
He needed to get out of here. No, he needed a drink. He moved to the kitchen and jerked open the cabinet above the sink. Fuck! Maybe in the bedroom...
Graham stormed down the hall, stopping in the middle of the room to survey the various surfaces for that familiar square bottle. Maybe over by the...
"Jesus!"
He looked down at the shattered glass, pulled yet another shard from the ball of the same foot, and flung it onto the dresser, not even bothering to assess the damage this time. All he was prepared to worry about right now was getting to the liquor store.
He stepped into a pair of sandals and snatched his keys from the dresser.