The dull gray walls of Clinton Correctional Facility loomed large over the small town of Dannemora. It was a small town, just barely south of the Canadian border, nestled in the Adirondack mountains. The main industry in the town was the prison. Most people in Dannemora worked for the prison in one way or another.
Lisa Starling got out of her rental car and surveyed the prison with some trepidation. She'd flown from Boston to Burlington, Vermont, which struck her as odd. It was closer than Albany, though. The gate guard had waved her in after checking her ID and verifying that she was indeed an agent of the FBI here to interrogate a prisoner.
The sight of the fences and barbed wire and barred windows reminded her unpleasantly of her own brief confinement in Argentina. She shuddered. Forget about that, she told herself. You're a deputy chief of the FBI now, you're not a prisoner. She glanced over at the simple gray Buick she had rented in Burlington as if it might ensure to her that she was indeed a federal agent. If that didn't work, the weight of the Glock against her hip could have told her that.
Lisa entered the door marked for visitors and checked in with a guard sitting behind a desk. He examined her ID calmly and asked for her weapon. She'd wondered if she ought to bring it and finally had decided she felt better with it, even though flying with a gun was a major pain. The guard didn't seem to think the gun was any big deal, fortunately. Visits from law enforcement officers were hardly uncommon at the prison.
He gave her a form to fill out, advising her among other things that if she was taken hostage, the prison could not guarantee her life or her safety. It also advised her that in order to be allowed to visit, she had to agree to keep her voice at a conversational level and could not engage in sexual behavior during the visit. How charming. Lisa wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean and decided she didn't want to know. She signed the agreement and handed it back to him. She was feeling vaguely uncomfortable in her blue suit.
"I'll call the shift commander for UCP down," he said. "You can have a seat over there, Agent Starling. There's coffee over there if you'd like."
Lisa got herself a cup and found herself feeling strangely exposed. She only wore skirt suits to the office if she had a meeting with the bigwigs. The skirt was perfectly modest, falling to just above the knee, but she found herself suddenly wishing she'd worn pants. She'd thought the professor might approve, and be more likely to give her the information he had about the Bludgeon Man. Then again, she had to admit, there was something absolutely insane about dressing to impress Professor Creed. The man had once disagreed with a student who had written a paper analyzing the legitimacy of slave rebellions from the viewpoints of a few different philosophers. Professor Creed had disagreed with it, and they had found the student re-enacting an old slave punishment from Suriname. Specifically, the young man had been found hung from a makeshift gallows near one of the Finger Lakes. Hung, not hanged. The victim had been suspended not from a noose around his neck , but from a steel hook passed through one of his ribs. He'd been left alive to suffer for a few days, but once they'd found him he was quite dead. Somehow, Lisa Starling did not think a man who could do something like that to someone was going to be particularly impressed by a skirt suit and her new pumps.
A gray-uniformed man with captain's bars pinned to his epaulets came down to see her. Clocksprings of gray hair curled out from under his dark cap. He spoke with what seemed like a permanent mumble.
"Agent Starling? I'm Captain Macon. Pleased to meet you."
"Hi," Lisa said nervously. "Yes, we spoke on the phone."
"Mm-hmm," he said. "Well, I just want to go over a couple of things with you before you talk with Professor Creed."
"Okay," Lisa said.
"First thing, don't worry too much. The UCP is locked down pretty much 'round the clock. There may be a few inmates moving back and forth to the exercise yard, but that's about it. There's a visiting room in the back of each cell, and that's where you'll meet him. You won't be disturbed."
Lisa nodded.
"Your visit with Professor Creed will be behind a Plexiglass barrier. You'll have a phone to talk to him through. At no time will there be any physical contact of any kind."
"I understand," Lisa said.
"Also, there's audio surveillance in the cell at all times. You're not his attorney, so a guard will be listening in. Figured I'd tell you now. But in the unlikely event anything happens, just speak up and a guard will be in."
"Gotcha," Lisa said.
"If you need to pass him some documents, there's a locked slot in the visiting booth. I'll have a guard handy to lock and unlock it for you. We don't just leave it unlocked – you gotta ask every time. It's a pain, but we like our security."
"I don't think that'll be necessary," Lisa said. "But thanks, if I need to give him something I'll ask."
"If you do, make sure it's paper only. No staples, no paperclips, no pens. He's got his own ink pens."
"Yes, sir," Lisa said archly. Her leg was trembling.
"And don't worry. Professor Creed's been a perfect gentleman since he got here. We've had no trouble with him. Most of the men on death row mind their manners. Surprising but true. They're all working on their appeals and they know that acting out here is gonna hurt them."
He gestured for Lisa to follow him and headed up the stairs. At the door to the stairwell, he stopped to unlock the door and held it politely for her. She grinned her thanks, feeling slightly more nervous about all this.
It was a lot noisier than she would have thought. The crashing of iron doors and barred gates happened constantly. It got under her skin and made her feel jumpy. A few inmates looked hungrily at her and she wished she had her gun with her. None of them said anything.
The floor on which condemned inmates were isolated was quieter. The condemned were kept in their single cells and never permitted to congregate. When she came through, she could see them all at their cell doors, watching her carefully through the barred windows. That creeped her out. It occurred to her that she was probably the only woman they had seen in God only knew how long. They didn't seem to be violent, or angry. There was nothing threatening in their gaze. For some reason that was worse, she thought; the men plastered up against the windows seemed more pathetic than threatening. As if they were poodles somehow mistaken for lions.
Then they brought her around to the visiting booth area. This area was all electronically controlled. An unseen guard pressed a switch somewhere and the door to the darkened visiting booth opened. Inside was a simple wooden chair and a telephone with no dial attached to the wall. In front of it was a large sheet of Plexiglass. Beyond the Plexiglass was a narrow alley-like room that contained a similar chair and phone for the prisoner. A door in the center of the room allowed him access from his cell. On the other side was an open shower stall. It occurred to Lisa that this was as close as any human being got to Professor Thomas Creed. The door on the side opened into his cell. Just beyond that door was where he lived and breathed. Where he was right now. Beyond that door waited a killer. Not just a killer; a monster. There was no explanation for his crimes. No reason for him to have done what he had. But, just as Hannibal Lecter had been termed a monster, so it was true with Thomas Creed.
Lisa Starling tensed and put her briefcase down on the floor of the visiting booth. The lights came up in the small visiting and bathing area. Yes, she thought, this made sense, to incarcerate this monster where no human being needed to contact him, where his movements could be controlled electronically and safely. What if he lunged against the Plexiglass? Would it hold? Professor Creed was strong, inhumanly so. Lisa knew this because she had seen his crime scene photos. He had decapitated a few of his victims; in one case he had managed to do so with his bare hands.
The door opened. Lisa tensed. From the living area of Professor Creed's cell came the sound of footsteps. It was a faint wsht-wsht sound. Professor Creed commonly preferred to wear his shower shoes in his cell. A human form appeared in the doorway and turned. Lisa's fingers dug into her palms.
Professor Thomas Creed is a tall man. Six foot two inches according to his prison records. He is actually quite slender, but in looking at him there is no sense that this man is gaunt or weak. He fills out his prison uniform nicely. Were you to simply look at his arms, you might notice that they were indeed slender. But the man himself seems to radiate a strange sort of power.
Professor Creed's hair is jet black and curly. During his freedom, he kept it neatly cut and short. Here, in prison, it has approached just to the barest edge of being unruly. Haircuts are once a month on Death Row and consist of a guard armed with electric clippers. The professor does not care for the military look.
Easily the most frightening part of Professor Creed are his eyes. He does not, as you might think, possess maroon eyes, as the man the Tattler insists on ceaselessly comparing him with once had. Instead, Professor Creed's eyes are an extremely pale blue. They are of one color throughout the entire iris; there is neither shade nor highlight. His pupils are inky black dots dropped in the middle of the blue. Upon looking at the professor it is easy to mistakenly conclude he might be under the influence of drugs; in normal light his pupils are mere pinpoints. Their effect is frightening. More than a few female undergraduates signed up for Professor Creed's Philosophy 101 class, believing him handsome, but when those spooky pale blue eyes fixed on them and his soft voice asked a question, they usually found themselves trembling. His eyes seem only partially human, as if Professor Creed was created by an alien intelligence that did not pay attention to the details. They are a void into which everything he sees falls.
Staring at Lisa Starling with those eyes, a slight smile crossed Professor Creed's face. He sat down on the opposite side of the barrier majestically, taking his time. He took the telephone on his side calmly and held it to his ear.
"Agent Starling," he said. His voice was pleasant and soft, barely above a whisper. It was calming and frightening at the same time. Here, in this place of clashing iron gates, buzzing speakers, and screaming inmates and guards, Professor Creed preferred to speak softly. Not even the harsh amplification of the phones changed that. "I trust your trip up was…pleasant?"
"Yes," Lisa Starling said, trying to avoid looking nervous.
"Did you fly into Burlington? That's usually how people come when they fly."
"Yes, I did," she said, "and rented a car."
"Ah," Professor Creed said. "I also trust the telephones are working properly? They were repaired just the other week. The result of a class-action suit against the DOC. We were forced to yell in conversations with our attorneys. A violation of attorney-client privilege, you know."
"They're working fine," Lisa said. "Now, Professor Creed, you told me you might have some information about the Bludgeon Man."
Professor Creed smiled. A flash of humor appeared in his eyes and vanished almost immediately.
"Ah, yes, the Bludgeon Man," he said. "Do you know the Bludgeon Man, the Bludgeon Man, the Bludgeon Man? A very angry boy is he."
"That's something you could have figured out from the papers," Lisa Starling observed. "Professor Creed, let me save you some time here. I am not some naïve little trainee. I am the Deputy Chief of Behavioral Sciences, I have a master's degree in psychology, and ten years of experience in the FBI. If you're going to jerk me around, I can just get on a plane and head back to Boston."
"Jerk you around? Please, Agent Starling. I rarely get the chance to speak with people other than guards. All I'm asking is a little civility and conversation. And some understanding for my, perhaps, forgetting social graces. A master's degree? From where, may I ask?"
Lisa Starling stared at the killer for several moments silently.
"UVA," she said suddenly.
"A fine school. I had a colleague in graduate school who taught there." Professor Creed pronounced the word grad-you-it.
"Thank you," Lisa said.
"The Bludgeon Man," Professor Creed said calmly, his voice still frustratingly low, "is a woman-killer. Women are his exclusive victims."
"Well, yes," Lisa said, wondering where the hell this was going. "Most serial killers stick exclusively to one gender of victims."
"I did not," the professor observed.
"Well, no," Lisa Starling said, and leaned forward. It was time to show him that she knew her stuff, too. "Seven of your victims were men. But you killed two women, Professor Creed. Angela Curran and Megan Stanwick. You chopped up Curran with a fire axe. Chopped off her arms and legs and then put tourniquets on her stumps. You probably were shooting for some sort of controlled bleed thing, weren't you? Unfortunately you messed it up and she bled out on you real quick."
Professor Creed shrugged and smiled guiltily, rotating his free hand palm up, as if to say These little things happen.
" Stanwick…well…you kidnapped Stanwick out to the country, out where no one would hear her scream. Then you whipped her for several hours with an electrical cable. Then you strangled her with it."
Her tone was not judgmental. Lisa Starling had dealt with serial killers in prison before. If you expressed disapproval of the horrors they had committed, they tended to think it was funny. What you did need to do was let them know you knew all the details of their crimes. If you did that, they wouldn't lie to you.
"Ah yes," Professor Creed admitted. "Well, Agent Starling, there is a lesson in Miss Stanwick's death. Do you know why I killed her?"
"The same reason you killed all your victims, Professor Creed," Lisa said stridently. "Because you enjoyed it."
"Not completely," he said, and seemed insulted. "Please, Agent Starling, I did have a goal in who I killed. What caused me to remove Miss Stanwick from my class roster was a paper she wrote."
"A paper? You must be a tough grader, Professor Creed."
He nodded. "Yes. Miss Stanwick wrote a feminist review of Friedrich Nietzsche. In it, she claimed that Nietzsche was a chauvinist, if you will, that he hated women. I could have tolerated that. I've certainly read and graded plenty of silly ideas in my time. But she claimed as given in her paper that he was a homosexual and that was why he hated women."
Lisa was puzzled and strove not to show it. "And you feel that he was not?"
"I don't know," he explained. "We don't know, Agent Starling. No one knows Friedrich Nietzsche's sexual orientation. He never wrote about it. And besides, you know, he was a very sick man. Unhealthy, I mean. He suffered from debilitating headaches. It's entirely possible he simply wasn't that interested in sexual relationships. And he went mad in 1888."
"Professor Creed, I didn't fly here for a philosophy lesson," Lisa said sharply.
"Patience, Agent Starling. Megan Stanwick was mistaken when she claimed to know Friedrich Nietzsche was a homosexual. She couldn't possibly. As a result, I simply followed Nietzsche's own advice in that very chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra that she quoted." He closed his eyes and his voice became commanding and carrying. The voice of a new prophet expounding a new way of life…or a philosophy professor trying to reach the sleepers in the back row.
"Then the old woman answered me: 'Many fine things has Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough for them. Strange! Zarathustra knows little about woman, and yet he is right about her! Is this because with woman nothing is impossible? And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it! Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth.' ' Woman, give me your little truth!' I said. And thus spoke the old woman: 'You go to women? Do not forget the whip!'"
"Very nice," Lisa said acerbically.
"Oh, don't get all offended and hoist the banner of feminism on me, Agent Starling," Professor Creed grinned. Those tiny pupils fixed on her. "The whip can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It's puerile and poor analysis to assume that Nietzsche thought every relationship between a man and a woman ought to be based on sadomasochism. The whip can be interpreted as a means of keeping one's distance. If you prefer, it might even be said that a woman is powerful, and can represent a real threat for a man if she chooses to be. Miss Stanwick died because of her lack of understanding of Nietzsche."
"And you think that's fitting?" Lisa asked.
Professor Creed shrugged. "How many will die because of your lack of understanding of the Bludgeon Man?" he asked.
Lisa's hand tightened on the phone until her fingers cramped. "I am working on it," she hissed.
"But back to Nietzsche. In fact, if you read The Gay Science, Nietzsche's views on women become more clear. He believed there was a fundamental difference between men and women. Some of it, I believe, was that Nietzsche was a creature of his time…just as we are. The concept of women's rights barely existed in his time. But the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, different in their natures…now there's something to play with. Science has proved to bear him out more than we think. Men and women have different blood chemistries. Men have more testosterone, which changes them physically, creating more muscle, but also works on the brain. It causes more violent behavior. Give a woman enough anabolic steroids – enough synthetic male hormone – and she'll start to masculinize. Her body will change, Agent Starling. Her jaw will start to become more square, she'll begin to grow facial hair. But her behavior will also change, Agent Starling. She'll start to act more like a man would. Give her enough, and she'll begin to act very violently indeed. Nietzsche might have changed his opinion had he known that, but in his day making a woman into a man – or a man into a woman – was an impossibility."
"So are you telling me that the Bludgeon Man is a female steroid abuser?" Lisa asked. That was a possibility, now that she thought about it.
But the professor shook his head. "No," he said, and there was no artifice or pretense in his voice. "The Bludgeon Man is indeed a man. But a man estranged from his nature; he's angry because of that. Someone took something from him once, Agent Starling, and that's what he wants more than anything. The killing is a means for him to cope with a rage and shame that is almost unbearable. He's no longer able to do the sorts of things he wants to do."
"What would those be?" Lisa said. Now, here it was. Once she'd let him say his little pretentious bullshit about Nietzsche, now here was something good. Something she could use.
"You've seen the Bludgeon Man before, Agent Starling," Professor Creed said. "He has a criminal record. I can assure you of that. But he's moved on to some new tricks."
Lisa leaned forward. "Professor Creed, do you know who he is?"
Professor Creed simply thought for a moment and offered her a cold smile.
"Listen," she said urgently. "I came out to see you because I thought you could help get this guy before he gets someone else. Lives are at stake here, Professor. Can we just cut to the chase here and you give me a name?"
"No," Professor Creed said blandly. "We'll do it my way or not at all. You're under no obligation to accept my assistance."
"And what if the Bludgeon Man kills someone else while you're playing games with me, Dr. Creed?" she asked cuttingly. Then, catching herself, she added, "Professor Creed, excuse me."
"That's all right," Thomas Creed said. "I do have a Ph.D, so 'Doctor' is a title I am entitled to. At Cornell I preferred Professor, as that was a better descriptor of my work, and of course once I'd gone to trial if anyone said 'Dr. Creed', that started off reams of poorly written articles comparing me to Dr. Hannibal Lecter – your cousin's husband, wasn't he? But you may call me 'Dr. Creed' if you prefer."
"I'd prefer you quit playing games with me and told me who he was." Lisa thought for a moment about her first cousin, and that of course made her think of her cousin once removed.
"You can't always have what you want," he observed coolly.
"What if the Bludgeon Man takes another life while you're teaching me philosophy?" Lisa repeated.
Professor Creed seemed not to follow. "So what if he does?" he asked. The concept that an innocent life being taken was a bad thing would not occur readily to him.
"Just tell me what you know," Lisa hissed.
"All in good time," Professor Creed said. "For now, Agent Starling, I suggest you look to the past. You've seen the Bludgeon Man before. Seek out your past and you may yet find him. If that doesn't do it, then you may come back and I will try to help you again. Thank you so much for coming, Agent Starling. You've brought a special tinge to my day."
Then he rose from the chair and bowed once, sardonically. He placed his phone back on its hook. Lisa's eyes widened.
"Professor Creed!" she shouted. But he'd already hung the phone back up and was retreating back into his cell. He might be able to hear her through the Plexiglass, but he didn't show it. Then he was back through the door, into his living area, and he was gone.
Lisa Starling stood up. Her heart was pounding and her pretty features twisted in anger. She let out a loud sound of frustration and left the visiting booth. The guard waiting there seemed apologetic.
"Didn't work out so well, huh?" he asked.
"Well…," Lisa said. "I think he knows something, but he's not letting on what."
"Well, if the visit's over, I gotta take you back down," the guard said apologetically.
Lisa Starling glared at the empty space behind the Plexiglass. Then she let air hiss out from between her teeth.
"Fine," she said. She stalked along, very annoyed, back down to her rental car. Her return flight to Burlington returned that evening; she'd hoped to have more time with the professor than she'd gotten.
In his cell, Professor Creed lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes. A fruitful first meeting. He began two letters. The first was a simple, courteous thank-you note to Lisa Starling, thanking her for meeting him and assuring her of his willingness to help should his first tip not work out. He signed it Thomas Creed, PhD and put it in his food slot for the guards to pick up.
The second was another letter to Marie Lavelle. Using the code system they had employed, it seemed at first to simply be the same sort of chatty, friendly letter one might expect an American death-row inmate to write to his European pen-pal. Only one who knew how to read it correctly would know what it actually meant. And once it was sent to France and Susana Alvarez Lecter received it, she grinned to see the true meaning of the letter. It was but a few scant, terse sentences, as coded communications demand.
SHE CAME. I GAVE HER THE FIRST STAGE. SHE WAS MAD BUT WILL BE BACK. ALL MY LOVE. CREED.