Author's note: Yes, I know, shouldn't work on two fics at once. But here we have a serious fic in order to go along with the little insanity entitled 'Fanfic Leap' (yes, it seems people like it so it will go on for now.) But here we are with something a bit more serious. This isn't a sequel to either the Susana series or the Erin series – time for something completely new, clear the deck, start fresh. We start out just after the end of Hannibal, movie-canon, where Clarice has returned to the FBI, and the GD has vanished. (No, he didn't step into the Quantum Leap accelerator.)
It was what most police officers call a righteous bust, and Clarice was pleased. Working with DEA and ATF, the FBI had just broken up a big drug ring in Washington, DC. Now was the pleasant afterglow of a job well done. She'd taken down one of the drug kingpins herself, and that made her feel good. The good guys had won one today. The bad guys had been stuffed in the backs of several patrol cars and were now calling cells in DC's jails home. Course, half of them would be out on the street tomorrow, but those were the breaks, and a few of them might stay there if the prosecutors did their jobs.
Her cell phone rang on her hip as she got out of the van and began walking through the parking lot of Quantico. She grabbed it and stared at the display briefly. The caller ID displayed a number from West Virginia. Curious, Clarice punched TALK and put the phone to her ear.
"Starling," she said calmly.
"Clarice, how are you?" a voice asked, heavily stewed in the drawl she had tried to get rid of herself. "It's Patty."
Clarice held back a sigh.
"Hi," she said. "What's new? Haven't heard from you in a while."
"Oh, well," Patty said, giggling nervously. "Charlene wanted to talk t'you, y'know. She's gonna be 'round your neck of the woods and wanted to see if she c'd visit."
I can't believe she actually talks like that, Clarice Starling thought. But while Clarice had escaped West Virginia for better things, her younger sister Patricia Starling had not. She'd done everything the clichès said. Pregnant at fifteen. Dropped out of high school. Married at sixteen and divorced at eighteen. Thank God she'd finally settled down with a decent fella who fed her and her daughter well. They had a house just as ramshackle as the one Clarice had grown up in.
Is your worst fear that people will now and forever believe they were, indeed, just good old, trailer camp, tornado bait white trash...and that perhaps you are too?
Clarice shivered as she heard that voice speak up, as it always did when thoughts of her younger sister came to mind. Dr. Lecter and his incisive knowledge, slicing deep into her mind. But no one had seen hide nor hair of the doctor since he had fled Chesapeake – and Clarice. He had simply run across the lake and vanished into thin air. But she was back on the job and Krendler was dead. There was some quiet satisfaction in that.
"Oh, really? Sure, put her on."
The excited voice of her fifteen-year-old niece came on the line. "Aunt Clarice! Hi, how are yew?"
"Doing good," Clarice said. She'd never been able to get used to being called Aunt Clarice. She remembered the one time Patty had brought Charlene up to UVA, when she'd been at college there. Everyone had thought it was hilarious that the four-year-old running around the dorm had called her 'Aunt Clarice' and for months they'd all called her 'Aunt Clarice'. It had driven her nuts. "How're you doing, Charlene?"
"Oh, just faaaahn," the girl said. "Hey, listen, Ah'm goin' on a school trip to Washington, Dee Cee, and I wanted to know if we could get together. It's been a long time."
It had indeed, Clarice thought. Years. Now that she thought about it, the last time she'd seen her niece was that trip to UVA. It made her feel guilty to think about it, but she could only stand so much of her sister's tendency towards white-trashiness.
"Oh, sure thing," she said, guilt making her tone warm. "That'd be great, Charlene. When are you coming up?"
"Next week," Charlene drawled. "School's out on the 19th – school proper, that is, an' we leave on the 20th and come back on the 27th."
Clarice thought. She'd have to take some time off, except for a meeting she couldn't ditch on the 22nd. But that was okay. Maybe 'Delia would help her out. And besides, they had to have some kind of activities planned for the kids. They weren't going to let them run wild in DC, were they? It occurred to her that Charlene was almost the same age Patty had been when she'd gotten pregnant.
Oh please don't let my niece get pregnant while she's out here to see me, Clarice thought, and then found herself feeling petty. Charlene was a decent kid. She hadn't gotten into the dope-and-partying stuff like her mother had. That comforted Clarice Starling a bit.
"Sure, Charlene, that'd be fun," she said. "You call me once you get up here, we'll arrange something fun." They could do all the tourist things that Clarice Starling, a long-time resident of DC, never did. And she might be able to urge her niece to follow in her footsteps instead of her cousin's.
"Okay," Charlene answered. "Much oblige, Aunt Clarice. I'll call yew once Ah git up thar."
Clarice winced. Please God, I hope I don't talk like that. But it would be nice to see her niece. She rarely got the chance to renew family ties; her job kept her too busy. Even so, she found herself oddly happy when she put her phone back in its belt holster. This would be fun, something nice and pleasant. She deserved a break.
…
Five days later
Central Prison
Raleigh, North Carolina
It was time now. All his careful plans had been put into action. They'd sentenced him to life in prison, never to be paroled. Well, they'd made a classic mistake in counting him out. He wasn't down for the count and he wasn't staying in prison for the rest of his life.
Dave McCracken had been in prison for five years, and after the first fitful year he'd seemed to adjust pretty well. They'd given him a job in the prison laundry. As time went on and he seemed to be less and less of a problem, he'd been allowed to truck the sheets in big carts out to the delivery van. Yeah, some privilege, pushing carts that weighed a couple hundred pounds out to the loading dock. But it gave him a brief opportunity to be outside, and that was cool. When he'd realized that he had access to the actual truck they loaded the sheets in, it had seemed much better. At first, he'd watched and waited, scanning out his opportunity.
It had proved to be much simpler than he'd thought. The guy who drove the sheets off was an older guy. Taking him down would be no problem at all. The problem was that they checked the van every time when it drove out the gate. The guy had to show ID or something; McCracken had been able to see it from the loading dock. Usually a guard would holler at him to get his cart back to the laundry, but he'd noticed that a few of them didn't always do their jobs. That would prove to be his way out.
He pushed the laundry cart out through the double doors and out to the loading dock. The delivery guy lounged in the driver's seat of the van, waiting. Course, he wouldn't help; loading the van was prisoner work, not for the likes of a free man. That was just fine. Dave McCracken would be a free man himself pretty soon.
The hydraulic lift hissed as it lifted the heavy laundry cart into the back of the van. Once that was done, McCracken ran back to the loading dock and opened the door, letting it shut behind him. The electronic systems would indicate that Inmate McCracken had opened the door and gone back inside. This was as it had been every day for the past two years, except Sunday when he wasn't expected to work.
McCracken watched the guy carefully through the back open doors of the van. If the dude had been smart, McCracken thought, he'd have gotten his ass out of the van and shut the doors while he could still see the inmate. But noooo, the guy had to have his cigarette and listen to the radio. The guy did the same thing, every time. McCracken had watched this for months. Dude was lazy. But hey, that was good, it was his ticket out of here. As quietly as he could, McCracken crept up on the van. The delivery guy lolled in his seat and listened to the ball game on the radio. Carefully, he put one foot on the van and crept into the metal recesses as quietly as he could. It took only a moment to crawl under the heavy steel cart.
Once the guy's cigarette was done, he got out of the van, as he always did, and headed around to lock the back doors. He did not notice McCracken crouched under the steel cart. The van started and drove forward to the gates of the prison. At the gates, it stopped. Here McCracken tensed. The guards on the afternoon shift had been on the lazy side themselves. According to the institution rules, they were supposed to open up the doors and check the van out. They rarely did, so long as the computer system told them that the door had been opened and then shut. He wasn't disappointed; they simply chatted with the driver for a little bit and then went back to their hut to open the door.
Lazy asses. He was gonna be free because of their lazy asses. He grinned under the heavy cart as he heard the guards chitchatting with the delivery guy for a little bit. Then the sound of the gate sliding open. And the van drove forward. He grinned. He'd done it. And it was so damn simple.
The van proceeded down the road, outside of the prison. McCracken squirmed out from under the laundry cart. There was only a space of about six inches between the bottom of the cart and the ground, and to do so took some wiggling. But the noises and creaking of the van covered the sound of his scrambling free. From inside his waistband he took a flat piece of metal. Once, it had been part of the handle to one of the laundry carts. He'd smuggled it back to his cell and sharpened it on the concrete floor.
The driver saw something in the mirror as Dave McCracken rose to his feet, his homemade knife in hand. He pulled over swiftly, but McCracken was determined. He hadn't gone through all this to stay free for only fifteen freakin' minutes.
The van pulled over suddenly on the road, parking askew. For a moment there was an anguished scream from the open driver's window. Then a heavy thud, then silence. The van started up again and rolled confidently forward. It picked up the highway and headed north.
Behind the wheel of the van, wearing the delivery guy's uniform, Dave McCracken reached across the seat for a battered piece of newsprint. He'd saved it from his trial. This piece of newsprint had been with him for years, either tucked away in his cell or on his person, whenever he'd been moved. The yellowing headline read FBI Agent testifies that behavioral evidence suggests McCracken guilty. There was a barely visible picture of a woman sitting on the witness stand, while he sat at the defense table and glowered at her. The picture had a caption as well. It read: Special Agent Clarice Starling testifies in the trial of David McCracken. Agent Starling arrested Mr. McCracken, suspected of several stranglings in the Winston-Salem area, when he attacked a sixth victim.
That had been five years ago. Five years in prison. Lousy walls, lockdown, and rotten guards. And now there was gonna be some payback for the bitch. Payback's a bitch, he thought, and chuckled. Payback was a bitch and so was she. Now that was appropriate. He'd teach Special Agent Clarice Starling a thing or two about behavioral science. He'd teach her to behave right proper. The thought made him chuckle again.
Dave McCracken chuckled and glanced back at the cooling corpse of the delivery guy where he'd tossed it on the cart. Blood from his slashed throat was red, a surprising slash of crimson against the bright white of the sheets. He would need another car, but he could arrange that. First he needed to put some distance between him and the prison. Then he'd steal a car or something. Clothes, cash, cars – he had some needs, but the first was distance.
The interstate was maybe twenty minutes away, and McCracken tuned in a rock station. He sang along with it, banging the steering wheel in time. Things were looking up for him already. He'd gotten a break. Now he'd do some breaking himself.