Agent Lloyd Bowman stared around the table at each person in turn. His face was white with shock. Dr. Lecter sat, calm even in defeat. Clarice seemed nervous. Charlene seemed…well, out there somewhere. She stared back at hinm And Mr. Crawford…Bowman had to look away.
"What the hell is going on here?" Bowman repeated.
"We were having dinner," Dr. Lecter said helpfully.
Bowman's eyes settled on the wreck that had once been his boss. Jack Crawford slumped in his chair, unmistakably dead. Bowman trembled. All that experience, all that wisdom…gone.
Bowman exhaled sharply. "All right, then. As of right now, you are all under arrest. The charge is kidnapping and murder of a federal officer." He turned and gave orders to his team. "Cuff them, Mirandize them, and bring them to the nearest jail we got. I'll make the determination on where to send them in the morning."
Dr. Lecter stood courteously to be handcuffed. He glanced over at the ID card clipped to Bowman's lapel. The machine gun at the back of his head never wavered.
"Agent Bowman, might I have a word with you?"
Bowman gave him a distrusting look, but he did have the man's attention.
"I should like you to have all the facts," he said calmly. "Charlene Starling is hardly answerable for her own actions at this point. A blood test will indicate she is heavily drugged. Clarice had no part in either the kidnapping of Jack Crawford or in our meal, other than as a diner. I am solely responsible for that – but not his murder." He glanced around at the rest of the officers. "I am saying that with full knowledge that it may be used against me in a court of law, by the way, and knowingly waiving my Miranda rights."
Lloyd Bowman's eyes narrowed. "If you didn't kill him, then who did, Dr. Lecter?" he asked sarcastically.
"Whomever it was who made the decision to cut off power to the house," Dr. Lecter explained. "I'm afraid the battery cut-over did not function. Once you shut off the electricity, you shut off the machine keeping him alive."
Bowman's eyes bulged for a moment.
"Thus, I didn't kill him. You did," Dr. Lecter finished.
For a moment, no one said a thing. Then Bowman cleared his throat and began to get things under control. At least as much as they could be.
"Okay," he said. "Get Starling out of that dress and in something else. Do we have anything else we can put her in?"
Clarice sighed and glared at him openly. "Her clothes are upstairs," she said coldly. "There's no evidence in them you'd find useful."
Bowman met her gaze. "I'll make that judgment, if you don't mind," he said. "Thank you, though."
There was a woman on the team whose job had been to take Clarice into custody. Bowman called her out and told her to get Charlene dressed in something and to take the dress and other clothes into custody. She took the drugged agent's hand and led her away. A few minutes later, Charlene returned in a pair of slightly oversized black fatigues and boots. She stared glassily around the table. Her face seemed slack. Agent Bowman didn't think Dr. Lecter was lying about having doped her up. She sure looked it.
Clarice twitched briefly as the agents holding her made her stand in order to cuff her.
"Goddam you," she said hatefully. "Why can't you just leave us alone? What's next?"
"As I said," Lloyd Bowman repeated, meeting her eyes without flinching, "for now, the two of you are under arrest. We'll get Agent Starling to a hospital and get her some help."
Charlene gave him a vapid stare. Clarice snorted.
"Oh, that sounds rich," she said. "That's what they said about me." Her tone turned mocking. "'We're gonna get you some help, Clarice'. If that's your idea of help, you're pretty sick."
Bowman shook his head. "I'm not going to do anything like that to her," he said. "For now she's going to a hospital and detoxing from whatever the hell you did to her."
"What do we do with Starling and Lecter?" another agent asked. Then, realizing his error, he specified "Clarice Starling."
Bowman considered. "For now, the local county jail," he said. "Call in some federal marshals. We'll have them beef up the jail's security. In the morning, we can put Dr. Lecter on a plane out to Colorado. Starling…well, hell, Starling can go back to Greenwood."
Clarice Starling let out a wordless shriek of anger and hatred. She launched herself at Bowman. But it was too late; she was already handcuffed and there were two agents holding her arms. They stopped her advance before she got three feet.
She glared at him in impotent fury.
"Goddam you, Bowman, I always thought you were better than this," she seethed. "I guess not."
"Starling, it'll be OK," he replied. "I'm serious about getting you some help, too."
"Meet the new boss," she spat. "Same as the old boss."
She met her niece's eyes. Charlene's eyes were blank. They took a moment or two to focus on her aunt. Clarice gritted her teeth and tried to control her rage. She didn't want to give them anything to hang Charlene up on; she didn't deserve that. Besides, if Charlene ended up in the can Clarice would be completely out of luck.
"Charlene," she said urgently. "You know what they're gonna to do me. You know. Don't let them, honey. Don't let them suck you back in."
More sirens came from outside and more vehicle grumbled over the crushed rock of the driveway. The different whoop of an ambulance was different from the police sirens outside. Blue and red lights lit up the outside of the house Dr. Lecter had rented.
Calmly, Lloyd Bowman led a slack-faced Charlene Starling outside. She went along without complaint, following him docilely. He found himself freaked out by it. She'd been a good profiler. Only person in years who managed to catch Dr. Lecter. Had he rendered her psychotic? Was she gonna go to a mental hospital herself? What the hell was going on?
He put his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes.
"Starling," he said. "Starling, it's Bowman. C'mon, talk to me."
She said nothing, simply meeting his eyes from behind whatever wall Dr. Lecter had put in her mind.
"Starling, listen. Whatever you went through in there, it's not your fault. And we're gonna help your aunt. I promise. Hell…I know what Crawford did. I won't do that. Just c'mon, say something,"
"Okay," she said in a gravelly tone, and then said no more.
Clarice Starling and Dr. Hannibal Lecter were hustled out of the house and stuffed into the back of separate cars. Charlene watched them go with the same slack expression on her face. She seemed to have no more expression than a wax dummy.
"Starling," Bowman tried again, "it's gonna be OK. We're gonna get you some help. We're gonna help your aunt out, too. This is what you wanted, remember? You worked so hard for this."
Charlene nodded and looked down at herself as if realizing for the first time that she was no longer wearing the gown. The ambulance crew hustled out of the back of the ambulance with a gurney. Carefully, they helped Charlene to lie down on it. They chattered above her, all medical lingo. She did not betray any comprehension of what was going on around her.
At the hospital, there were doctors and nurses clucking over her in the ER. A blood test made the doctor reading it purse his lips and whistle. Charlene was taken up to a quiet floor and installed in a room. There was no one else in the room with her, although there was another bed. A nurse helped her change into a gown with brisk and impersonal cheeriness.
For a few hours she lay in her bed and stared out the window. She did not move or speak. The nursing staff began to murmur amongst themselves and wonder if she shouldn't be transferred to the psych ward. Ultimately, the decision was to let her rest and see what happened once the drugs had filtered out of her system.
Lloyd Bowman showed up after all was said and done. He smiled at the young woman.
"It's all OK now, Starling," he said. "We've got the suspects in the local county jail. It's a small place, but plenty secure. They're in isolation cells on opposite wings of the jail. They're not going anywhere until the morning, I can promise you that."
Charlene eyed him with no camaraderie.
"What's gonna happen to my aunt?" she asked flatly, the first time she had spoken since the FBI had shown up.
"She's going back to Greenwood," Bowman allowed. Seeing her face, he shrugged guiltily. "Look…I know what Crawford was gonna do. That's not gonna happen. I promise. I mean, McQuerry himself is missing. You know anything about that?"
She did not reply. Bowman decided to leave it be for now.
"She's gonna get the help she needs, Starling. I promise. So are you. Just take it easy and we'll get this all taken care of."
She nodded wordlessly, her face inscrutable.
"Well, look," he said. "It's late, and I ought to let you get some sleep. You can see your aunt in the morning. We'll be taking her back to Greenwood at seven AM. If you're awake I'll come get you and you can have a visit with her."
"How about Dr. Lecter?" she asked.
"We'll drive him to the airport at six-thirty. Private flight chartered right for him, with non-stop service to Florence, Colorado. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars." He chuckled nervously.
She nodded again.
"Must be kind of weird, coming home for you and all," he said.
"What?" Charlene asked.
Bowman frowned. "Don't you…don't you know where you are?"
Charlene shook her head.
"West Virginia," he said. "They brought you back to a little town in West Virginia. Almost perfect, we never would've found him if he hadn't kidnapped Chief Crawford, God rest his soul. Crawford managed to turn on his cell phone and stick it in his jacket pocket. Led us right to him." He shook his head.
"Get some sleep, Starling. It's all gonna be OK."
He left then, feet silent on the linoleum. Charlene was alone with her thoughts. She found herself wondering where her aunt was. Was she in a decent cell? Was it clean? She could hear the barred gates crash shut in her mind and shivered.
She was drugged, yes, but she could think more clearly than she had let on. Her uncle had been Dr. Lecter. That did not surprise her as much as she thought it might have. On some level, she thought she had always known.
If she sat here, everything she had once wanted would be hers. Dr. Lecter would go to prison and never be free. Innocent people would be safe from him. She would be safe from him. Her aunt would recover and be part of society again.
But then there were nagging doubts. Dr. Lecter could've turned her innards into a smorgasbord if he really wanted to; he could have made her resemble a Picasso painting. She'd been completely helpless around him and he had refrained from harming a hair on her head. Was he perhaps not so evil as she had once thought him to be?
Dr. Lecter and her aunt were both in a cell somewhere. Caged, like animals. Clarice would be delivered to the tender mercies of whoever had succeeded McQuerry. Were they telling the truth this time? Or should she try to stop them? But what could she do? She was only one person. Trying to free them would likely end in failure. They would end up locking her up too.
She was tired. So tired. A night's sleep would do her a world of good.
She had worked for this for a year. Things would go back to what she wanted. All she had to do was wait until the morning.
Charlene Stenson Starling lay in her hospital bed and stared out the window, wondering which side to take.