Author's note: This chapter has been a while in the coming, But here we are.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter's suite was quite pleasurable. He sat in his living room, calmly enjoying a cappuccino and reading the criminal file of Dave McCracken. After all, a promise was a promise. Dr. Lecter took great pleasure in putting others through all sorts of travails before giving his word, but once he had given his word, it was inviolate.
Mr. McCracken was a quite nasty man, Dr. Lecter thought. In other circumstances, he might have enjoyed meeting him. Of course, he wouldn't be cultured, but there was something enjoyable in meeting someone else who had escaped the confines of a cage and comparing notes. However, he had now crossed Clarice's path, and Dr. Lecter had promised to help. McCracken was almost assuredly a sadist. Dr. Lecter had to give him credit: kidnapping Charlene right out of Clarice Starling's driveway was a gutsy move. But now it lay in Dr. Lecter's court to catch him. If he did, Clarice would hold up her end of the bargain. He had no doubt of that.
It was harder than he thought to leave the thoughts of his little Clarice behind and concentrate on the task at hand. He couldn't help but think she had made the wrong choice. Her talents were wasted in the FBI; they would work her for thirty more years and then leave her with nothing more than a gold watch and a 'Good work, Starling'. Whereas if she were with him, she would know greater happiness than she ever thought possible. But she had made her choice.
McCracken was a former electrician. Dr. Lecter thought that telling. Where had he worked before? According to McCracken's arrest record, he had worked once in a factory but it had closed. This was apparently the stressor that had resulted in his killing spree. Very interesting. Dr. Lecter knew that the escapee would most likely seek out something that he had known before. Something that would be familiar to him. He was in a new state, without knowledge of the area and its environs. Might he not seek out the ugly industrial complex he had known before? Dr. Lecter thought that he might.
McCracken was logical; his escape had shown that. He was intelligent and ruthless. A pity that they might not be able to meet. Dr. Lecter had some sympathies for anyone else who had escaped confinement. But still, targeting a young girl was something he found distasteful, and in any case he had given his word.
Dr. Lecter rose from his chair. He would need to visit a few town halls in order to find the addresses of abandoned factories. For a moment he found himself reflecting: this was so easy for him, and yet it would have taken the FBI weeks to think of it. Perhaps Clarice might have, but it was entirely possible that she was not at her top form. Under the circumstances it was quite understandable.
Then again, he thought, they were only human. He had a mind not measurable by modern man, and in the asylum, he'd had plenty of time. He'd observed the other inmates in the violent ward and what made them tick. He'd read extensively. He knew the criminal mind better than most of the FBI's profilers. He knew how they thought and what they sought. It was often sad and pathetic, really; they sought out things that were familiar, which often led to their capture. The day the FBI learned to predict them as well as he did would be the day they took a quantum leap forward in profiling.
Calmly, Dr. Lecter put on his overcoat and strolled out. He had some work to do.
…
Clarice Starling sat in her basement cubicle at Quantico. Her eyes were hot with unshed tears as she listened to a copy of the tape. It was absolutely horrible and heart-rending to hear the killer torturing her niece, but she did it anyway. She couldn't help but think that there might be some clue to be found therein.
So she heard McCracken's coarse words and Charlene's screams over and over, gritting her teeth against the horror. She found her mind wandering. Why had this happened to Charlene? The girl had never hurt anyone else. And for God's sake, why had Dave McCracken had to escape when Charlene was visiting? Any other goddam week and Charlene would have been safe at home, in West Virginia.
But it did no good to ask why. Her reverie was interrupted by the phone ringing. She stared at it for a moment, wondering if it would be Dr. Lecter already. She didn't want him calling her at work; it would be traceable. For just a moment she thought about how little guilt she felt about conniving with a serial killer. For someone who had striven all her life to be four-square, honest, a true shepherd to save the lambs, it was certainly out of character.
She picked up the phone and held it to her ear.
"Starling," she said dully.
"Agent Starling, this is security. We have a man and a woman at the front gate claiming to be your sister and brother-in-law."
Clarice blinked owlishly. Was Patty here already? Then she remembered her younger sister was flying in.
"I'll be right there," she said, and got up from her cubicle.
It seemed odd, walking through the halls of Quantico. Everything was just as it had been before. All the halls, all the elevators, everything, just as before. But for Starling, nothing was the same. Her very world had been shaken. For if a killer could kidnap her innocent little niece from her very own driveway, what did that say about order in the world? Was the order she'd sought to maintain all her life anything more than an illusion, a tissue-thin band she had foolishly thought would hold the good high and the bad in its place?
She thought of how Dr. Lecter would be so amused at that. He knew better; he knew that the world was full of chaos, sound and fury. A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, Shakespeare had said. Were the Bard and the doctor correct? It seemed they were.
She drove down to the front gate, far too slowly for her usual preferences. At the front gate was a shiny new rental car, pulled over to the side. The Marine on duty was waiting for her, full of calm professionalism, with two people by his side.
"Here," she said. "What do I need to fill out?"
He gave her the forms. "Sign here and here, Agent Starling, and you can't bring them anywhere on the base that's secured. Which is most of it."
Clarice nodded and looked at her sister for the first time in years. Patty Starling Stenson resembled her older sister a fair amount, except her brown hair was curly where Clarice's was straight as her morals. Rather like her daughter's, Clarice found herself thinking, and forced herself to stop. Her eyes, the same shade of blue as Clarice's, seemed pinched and sad. Her daughter was held hostage by a madman.
"Patty," Clarice said.
"Clarice," her sister returned. She opened her arms. Slowly, uncomfortably, Clarice accepted her sister's hug. Behind her, David Stenson stood and looked vaguely uncomfortable. Clarice offered him her hand.
"Who all's got my baby?" Patty whispered.
"Patty, I want you to listen to me, now," Clarice said, standing straight. Crazily, it was easier to be strong around Patty; her younger sister needed a rock to lean on. She could be that rock. "Y'all follow me back to the FBI's building here an' we'll eat in the cafeteria. Y'all must be hungry." Her drawl returned, sharp as it had ever been when she was a young girl in the hills of Appalachia, and she was completely unaware of it.
Equipped with visitor's passes, her sister and brother-in-law were able to join her in the cafeteria. It wasn't much. Patty looked at her with lost eyes over her burger.
"Who's got my baby, Clarice?" she asked hoarsely.
Clarice found herself cringing. All the times she'd ever thought of her sister as white trash, all the times she'd ever considered Patty to be a woman who'd made all the wrong choices in life, every nasty thought and resentment she'd ever had towards her sister seemed to haunt her. Her sister was simply a woman trying to cope with possibly the greatest loss a parent can know. Money or class or life choices had nothing to do with it.
"A…a criminal. Someone who escaped from prison." Clarice began. "We're looking into it. I promise you that, Patty. We'll get her back."
"Why Charlene?" Patty asked directly. "Why my little girl?"
"I don't know, Patty," Clarice whispered.
"She ain't never hurt nobody," Patty said powerlessly.
"I know. We'll get her back."
"She's just a girl. She ain't done nothing." Patty's eyes were blank, envisioning her daughter. When she spoke again, it was with the barely controlled, disjointed speech used by those who cannot cope with the present and have taken refuge in random spots of the past.
"Clarice, y'remember when we was kids? And we used to listen to the trains goin' by? Charlene used to love trains too."
"Yes," Clarice Starling said, remembering two little girls sharing a room, listening to the thunder and whistle of the trains as they passed. How it had seemed to shake the room! She had thought them the greatest, mightiest engines on earth, massive steel thundering along.
"Our house now, it's right close to the tracks, and she used to listen to them when they went by. All the kids took a train down here to DC. She thought it was so great. Her first trip on a train."
Clarice Starling's eyes went as blank as her sister's. Trains? Wait a minute. The loud blast of a train whistle filled her consciousness. Not a train passing by a house in the early seventies, but a train whistle more recently. Comprehension filled her brain and her jaw dropped. How in God's name had she missed it?
"Patty, could y'all excuse me for like fifteen?"
Patty Starling Stenson blinked at her older sister. "Why sure thang, Clarice," she said.
Clarice Starling ran down to her desk and sat down. She grabbed up the tape player on her desk and put her headphones on. She rewound the tape and punched PLAY as hard as she could.
"Hey, Starling! Starling, you listening? Let's have some fun," came the evil voice on the tape. She punched REWIND and played it again.
"Hey, Starling!" There it was: WHAAAA, the sound of a train whistle. "Starling, you listening! Let's have some fun!" WHAAA, again.
"Son of a bitch, you're right close to some train tracks," she whispered, and ran back to the cafeteria.
"Patty," she said urgently. "Patty, listen. You just gave me a hell of an idea. But I need to check somethin' now. Can we get y'all settled in your hotel and I'll call you?"
Patty looked blankly at her and then shrugged. "Sure, Ah guess…is it about Charlene?"
"Sure is," Clarice said. "I need to check some thangs. I don't mean to be rude, but you know."
Patty shook her head and started to cry. "Hell no, Clarice, don't worry bout it, not if it's about my baby,…"
"It's OK. Don't cry, Patty. Lemme just check up a few things. I'll call you in a couple hours, how's that?"
Patty went along willingly enough to her car, and Clarice Starling raced down to her office. She grabbed her gun and holstered it. Then she ran upstairs, to where she could check railroad lines in the area for possible hideouts. McCracken was local; the envelope at her house had been left there with no postage. He hadn't mailed it, so he had to have delivered it himself.
As she ran back upstairs, she didn't notice the voicemail light on her phone flashing.