Author's note: Lots of gore in this chapter. Bon appetit. Steel, you're correct in believing this one is winding down…but there's a bit of blood in the old man yet…(I'm mangling Shakespeare, don't mind me.) On with the show, Dear Reader….
Clarice Starling dressed for dinner with a certain sense of satisfaction. Dr. Lecter had selected a dress for her, and it was up to his usual taste. Black, silk, and quite pretty. She would have to get Charlene dressed as well, and that was going to be an issue. Drugged or not, Charlene was not going to like it. Dr. Lecter did not quite understand that, she thought. In the lexicon of Charlene Starling, there was useless, very useless, and then there was froufrou girly crap.
She carried the long dress bag into Charlene's bedroom. Charlene herself was still sitting in bed. She eyed her aunt and the long bag warily.
"What's that?" she asked suspiciously.
"Clothes," Clarice answered, and smiled brightly. "This is a fancy dinner. You want to look nice, don't you?" She unzipped the bag and revealed the dress. It was a light silvery gray, strapless, and went to the floor. Matching shoulder-length gloves and shoes completed the ensemble. Charlene stared at the dress as if it was a dead raccoon.
"I ain't wearing that," she said flatly. "I don't go for all that…froufrou girly crap."
Clarice sighed. She had no parental experience to fall back on. How had Patty dealt with this? She probably hadn't. She found herself wondering if Charlene had insisted on wearing pants to her prom. Or had she gone? Clarice hadn't.
"C'mon, Charlene," she coaxed. "This is a black tie affair. Everyone's going to be dressed up. I am. Your uncle's got a tux. I can't let you go down there in pajamas. Your uncle would kill me."
Charlene stuck her chin out defiantly. "Aunt Clarice, I don't do dresses an' heels an' pantyhose. That's for stuck-ups. I work for a living. Cain't have all that froufrou when you're working the street."
Clarice sighed. "You're not working the street now."
"Still don't like all that froufrou crap," Charlene answered.
Is that going to be necessary? Dr. Lecter had shown enormous restraint and patience towards the young woman who had incarcerated him. He would not be happy if Charlene refused to wear the dress.
"Give it a try, Charlene," Clarice tried again. "C'mon, it's fun once in a while."
Charlene rolled her eyes.
"Please, Charlene? Do it for me. Your uncle will be mad at me if you don't wear it."
Charlene Starling sighed heavily, as if asked to take on a burden more than mortal man could bear.
"Fine," she said.
Clarice shrugged. "Thanks, honey," she said calmly.
Getting Charlene into the dress was not as difficult as she thought, since her niece now had the use of her right arm. Charlene glared at her own reflection in the mirror. Clarice noticed the scar along her shoulder and was reminded of herself, at the dinner with and of Paul Krendler.
"Well, now, don't you look nice," Clarice said, and brought her niece downstairs to where Dr. Lecter was waiting. He wore a neat tuxedo, sharply pressed. His pants bore razor-edge creases. He had his cookware set up. Some monstrously expensive pan was set up on a monstrously expensive LP gas burner. Clarice smiled gently at him. He did so love to cook.
"Ladies," Dr. Lecter said, smiling. "You look quite lovely." He conducted each to her seat in turn, offering his arm gentlemanly. When he sat Charlene down, he slid a needle into her arm as she sat. It was quite thin, and Charlene did not seem to notice its insertion. Nor did it bleed when he withdrew it.
The first course was a salad, with finely chopped greens. The amounts he served to them were quite small. Charlene seemed puzzled; it wasn't like Dr. Lecter's hospitality. Clarice smiled. She knew his reason. He didn't want them to fill up on salad. The main course was coming.
"Your therapy is coming along nicely, Charlene," Dr. Lecter said. "I'm quite pleased with your progress."
"Thank you," Charlene said.
"I do trust you're ready for the next step."
Charlene appeared to think that over. "I guess we'll have to see," she said.
"Indeed," Dr. Lecter agreed. He was curious to see what she would do. He wondered if she had the .45 with her. He hadn't seen any bulges on her leg that might indicate its presence. Even if she had it, Dr. Lecter wasn't concerned. He had carefully rounded up the cartridges for it. If she tried to stop him without the gun, the drugs he'd given her would slow her down enough that he could regain control of the situation before things got too unpleasant.
Calmly, Dr. Lecter walked back into the kitchen and reappeared with a stout oak armchair on a dolly. This had worked well for him before. Seated in the armchair was Jack Crawford. He wore a tuxedo as well. His arms and body were bound firmly to the chair with black duct tape. Dr. Lecter had been most delighted to find black duct tape for sale on the Internet. The ugliness of the more common light gray against the tuxedo would have marred the outline. Another piece firmly covered his mouth. He seemed quite scared. Beads of sweat rose on his forehead.
Clarice Starling smiled with no sympathy at her old boss. Charlene Starling blinked at him and watched him with no expression. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two women.
"I believe you both know Section Chief Jack Crawford," Dr. Lecter said. He bent down and whispered in the other man's ear.
"Now, Jack, I'll be willing to take the tape off your mouth and allow you to join the conversation. I will remind you, though. Screaming is rude, and you know how I feel about rude people."
Jack Crawford trembled and nodded.
"Very well, then," Dr. Lecter said, and removed the tape.
"Clarice," Crawford said hoarsely.
"Mr. Crawford," Clarice said. "So, surprised? I'm not a vegetable after all."
Crawford stared at the floor and said nothing.
"I guess I just want an answer, Mr. Crawford," Clarice continued. "Did you make that decision? Yes or no. And if so, why?"
Crawford trembled. It seemed almost as if he was being shocked by a small but constant electric current. Clarice wondered if he was. Dr. Lecter could have done that. It would be ironic. But somehow she didn't think he had. He'd already done it to McQuerry. He'd been true to his word. Dr. McQuerry was still alive. Well, she allowed, that would have to be qualified. Dr. McQuerry's body still lived. However, he would quote no more rules to anyone. The repeated shocks had rendered him mute and drooling. Clarice wondered if the damage would heal or not.
Whatever he had planned for Crawford would be more final.
"You'll kill me anyway," Crawford said. It sounded like his tongue was dry. His eyes abandoned Clarice, knowing she would not help, and sought out Charlene's.
"Charlene," he said. "Agent Starling. If you can hear me…somewhere in there, if you can hear me…you know this isn't right."
Charlene blinked and looked vaguely confused. Clarice glanced over at her to see what she might do. Would that get a reaction out of her? Had Dr. Lecter's therapy held?
"I can hear you, Mr. Crawford," Charlene said in a chilly but respectful tone.
"Starling, now listen to me. You…you know what they're going to do to me."
Charlene considered. "Why did you do what you did to Aunt Clarice?" she asked finally.
Crawford trembled. He seemed to realize there was no way around the question. His hands shook uselessly above where his wrists were bound to the chair.
"I…I rolled the dice. I had to," he said, knowing full well his rationalizations would fall on deaf ears. "Dr. Lecter had to go to prison. You should know that better than anyone, Charlene. You worked so hard to put him away. Made me proud of you. If Clarice wasn't going to cooperate and would've testified in his favor…we had to do something. Putting Dr. Lecter away was all I ever wanted to do."
Charlene's eyes burned at him. Crawford looked away. If they'd gotten to her, he was as good as dead. Dr. Lecter tilted his head and eyed his niece calmly. He was waiting for a particular word.
"Putting Dr. Lecter in prison was important," she said, and seemed conflicted. "But that couldn't possibly justify what you did to Aunt Clarice. If you had a case against her you could've put her in jail. Put her on trial. I'd have had no problem with that. But trying to fry her just so you could use her as a pawn against Dr. Lecter? That's just…that is heartless, Mr. Crawford."
Dr. Lecter smiled. Very good.
Crawford did not protest further. Dr. Lecter leaned over him and cleared his throat.
"Yes," he said, his voice carrying. He seemed like a great orator to the two women sitting at the dinner table; one the woman who loved and admired him and the other heavily drugged and unsteady. "Heartless, Mr. Crawford. A fitting choice of words, don't you think?"
Dr. Lecter unbuttoned Crawford's dinner jacket and opened it. He undid the Velcro catch at the back of the section chief's neck. When he lifted it free, it became obvious that Crawford's shirt was in fact a dickey, with the bow tie integral to it. Merely a rectangular patch of cloth with a collar. Dr. Lecter put the dickey down on the floor.
Jack Crawford shirtless was not a lovely sight to behold. His stomach was crusted with gray hair. At his chest was a large, mostly square hole. It was framed in gauze pads. Although Dr. Lecter had done his level best to ensure that every last blood vessel was tied off or cauterized, there was still a bit of blood.
The flesh had been carefully cut away, and the protecting ribs cut off neatly and then sanded so that they would not stick out and spoil the effect. The hole was neatly square. This had taken several hours of work and Dr. Lecter was rather proud of it, even if he did say so himself.
Crawford's naked heart beat slowly, pulsing with bloody life as it had for almost eight decades.
He glanced pleadingly at Charlene and Clarice in turn. Clarice simply stared back at him with a hardness in her eyes he had never seen before. Charlene simply looked shocked, as if this was beyond her capability to take.
"Yes, Jack, heartless indeed," Dr. Lecter continued. He placed several sets of hemostats on Crawford's dinner plate. He then rolled up a machine on a cart to Crawford's side. Crawford looked sick. Charlene looked distressed. Dr. Lecter donned a surgical robe and a pair of veterinary gloves that went up to his elbow.
Dr. Lecter was quite impressed with the heart-lung bypass machine he had borrowed from a local hospital. New advances in technology had rendered the machine much smaller than before. Dr. Lecter had paid careful attention to how to operate the machine and believed he could do it. If not, they would simply be denied some dinner conversation. It was a chance he was willing to take.
It took longer than Dr. Lecter expected to attach the proper tubes and suture them to where he needed to. A few books on organ transplants had told him what he needed to know. But Dr. Lecter was quick and decisive with his motions. He turned the machine on and removed Jack Crawford's heart.
Crawford's color looked poor – a sickly gray. Yet not a drop fell from the tubes connecting him to the heart-lung machine. His eyes remained open. He trembled.
Across the table, Charlene's eyes were wide. She stared at Dr. Lecter for a few moments. Her mouth worked. She tried to get up from her chair. When she did, he knees gave out on her and she slid to the floor. Dr. Lecter glanced over at this. A bit of backsliding; it wasn't too bad. No therapy went a hundred percent all the time.
"Clarice, I've got my hands full over here," he said mildly, putting the heart into a deep steel bowl. "Would you mind?"
Clarice nodded and stood herself, helping her niece to her feet. Determined blue eyes met wide, terrified blue eyes.
"Aunt Clarice, no, you can't do this," she said.
"Charlene," Clarice said, "it's all right."
"No, it isn't," Charlene panted. She tottered a bit. Clarice held her wrists firmly, giving her a steely gaze.
"Your uncle is doing what has to be done," Clarice said. "You know what he did."
"This isn't right," Charlene insisted.
Clarice sighed. "Charlene, hon, just sit down. You might as well anyway. You can't do anything else."
"Aunt Clarice," Charlene said hurriedly, "there are five aspects to your border profile and six of Dr. Lecter's. Don't do this and I'll tell you what they are."
Across the table, Dr. Lecter's voice was jaunty. "I'm afraid it's too late for that, Charlene. It's already done. Now please, sit down and let's eat."
Dr. Lecter took the bowl into the kitchen, not wanting to upset his patient any more than necessary. Besides, he would be able to wash out the blood and remove his protective garb in relative privacy. It took only a moment or two to stuff the gloves and robe in the trash. Then he set to rinsing out the heart of its blood in the kitchen.
Back in the dining room, Crawford's eyes met Clarice's.
"Are….are you happy now?" he stuttered.
Clarice's eyes flashed. "Mr. Crawford," she said, "once I admired you more than anyone else in the world. And even after I left, I would have been more than willing to let you live your life out. You drove us to this. You have no one to blame for this but yourself. Dr. Lecter would've allowed you to live even after you tried to track him. But trying to fry me? That was petty, cruel…and heartless." She smiled coldly.
His eyes turned to Charlene.
"Charlene," he said, and his tone was almost begging. "Are you going to let them just kill me? You know you're next. What're they going to do to you?"
Charlene's face was almost as gray as her dress. "They…they ain't killed me yet," she said shakily. "They could've if they wanted to."
"That's for now," Crawford said. "They're gonna kill me. You're next."
A strange mixture of drugged yet naked fear spilled across Charlene's face.
"Maybe they can give you an Abiocor," Charlene said in a tone that suggested madness at the gate.
Clarice got up and patted her niece calmingly. Charlene turned and buried her face in her aunt's shoulder, trembling and ill. Above her, Clarice's eyes shone at Crawford with anger. There would be no succor for this black sheep from her.
"We're not going to kill you, Mr. Crawford," she said, continuing to calm her niece as best she could. "We're going to let you…sit there. Sit there and live for as long as you can. Maybe Charlene's right. Maybe they can give you an artificial heart, or a transplant. Fine by us. All we want is a nice dinner."
Dr. Lecter came in bearing a covered tray. He set it down at the head of the table. A rich smell of cooked meat came from it. With a flourish, Dr. Lecter removed the cover and displayed the result. It looked much like any other slice of meat, already cut into wafer-thin slices. They were stewing in a fine-smelling sauce. Calmly, Dr. Lecter began to walk around the table, serving a few slices to each person at the table. Clarice accepted hers with a bit more malicious relish than Dr. Lecter had expected. Then again, he supposed, Clarice had suffered a great deal at Crawford's hands. Completely needlessly, too. He could allow her a bit of anger.
Charlene stared glassily at the strips of meat on her plate. Dr. Lecter had prepared a spinach mousselline as a side dish and he spooned some onto her plate as well. She poked at that with a fork as if distrusting it. Crawford stared helplessly at his own helping. Dr. Lecter had given him medication so that the procedure of opening the chest was painless, but his consciousness was not degraded in the slightest; he knew exactly what was happening.
Calmly, Dr. Lecter assumed his own seat.
"Mr. Crawford, would you say grace?" he asked politely.
Crawford's face had turned slightly gray. Dr. Lecter supposed the perfusion machine was keeping him alive imperfectly. Well, all he had ever hoped for was that Jacky-boy would last through dinner conversation.
How perfect, Dr. Lecter thought. A final victory dinner. He had taken away Jack's protégé not once, but twice.
"Bless…bless us, O Lord, and these gifts we are about to…re…receive," Crawford wheezed. He fell silent, unable to continue.
"Brief. Good enough. Thank you, Jack." Dr. Lecter said, and fell to eating. Clarice grinned coldly once at her tormentor and ate with gusto. Charlene stared at the strips of meat on her plate nervously.
"Is something wrong, Charlene?" Dr. Lecter asked kindly.
"Well,…no," she said. "It's just….I mean…this is…,"
"A dinner," Dr. Lecter said. "Now, please. Eat. You'll quite like it once you've tried it." As if to demonstrate, he forked another mouthful into his own mouth. It was quite good, considering it was almost eighty years old. Not really tough or gamy at all. The sauce did wonders for it.
Charlene speared a strip of meat with her fork and trembled. She stared at her fork for several long moments, as if weighing something in her mind. Then she clamped her eyes shut, swallowed, and ate it.
"Very good," Dr. Lecter said approvingly. He gathered up some for Jack Crawford and held it out to him. Crawford turned away, his face looking like that of a corpse.
"Now, Jack, do try some," Dr. Lecter said reprovingly. "You've given more than anyone else for this meal. Don't be rude."
Jack Crawford shuddered and ate obediently.
"So, tell me, Charlene," Dr. Lecter said lightly. "Are you planning to continue in the FBI?" It would mean something for Jacky-boy to hear before Dr. Lecter decided to switch off the perfusion machine.
Charlene shook her head. "Can—May I have a glass of wine?" she asked.
Dr. Lecter pursed his lips. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said mildly. "It might react with your medication."
"Brainwashing…bastard," Crawford whispered through lips dry as a tombstone.
Dr. Lecter sighed. "No, no," he said. "I told you back in prison, Jack. You wouldn't keep her for long. You never do. Will, Clarice, and now Charlene. I seem to always end up prizing the best away from you somehow. But come now. Let us have pleasant conversation."
And pleasant conversation – or a reasonable facsimile thereof – reigned throughout the end of the meal. Clarice talked avidly of her plans for the future. Charlene had considered going back to school, or so she said. For more psychology. Dr. Lecter privately thought a psychologist with a PhD only armed for half the battle, and he doubted Charlene would try medical school. Too bad. She was clever enough for it.
At the end of the meal Dr. Lecter served cappuccino. Crawford's was served through a straw, as Dr. Lecter did not want the bother of having to hold the cup for him. Crawford took a sip and spit out the straw.
"It's all right, Jack," Dr. Lecter advised. "After all, it's not like too much caffeine will raise your heart rate." He smiled at his own bon mot.
Suddenly, the lights overhead plunged into darkness. The sounds of shattering glass and male shouts filled the room. Confusion ranged around the table.
When the lights came back up five minutes later, there were at least ten other people in the room. They wore black fatigues and held machine guns in their hands. Two were at Dr. Lecter's seat. One held him pinned down flat over the table. The other held a machine gun pointed at the back of his head. Two were at Clarice's seat, holding her similarly. One stood over Charlene, although he did not restrain her. Another stood over Jack Crawford.
Agent Lloyd Bowman, Crawford's second-in-command, entered the room and stared around in shock. Dr. Lecter let out a sigh. Clarice glared at him with a mixture of open hate and fear. Charlene stared glassily at him as if only barely recognizing him.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked.