Lisa Starling was angry as she pulled back into the prison parking lot. The Bludgeon Man had killed again. Right under the joint task force's nose, too. Jason Sullivan had been flacking the press for them, saving the FBI the trouble. Lisa found she quite liked the detective lieutenant. He was good at his job and utterly determined to catch the Bludgeon Man. Besides, he was cute, a little voice inside her said, one she was beginning to admit existed.
But now, here, in this prison town, she had work to do herself. This time, she was going to get the professor to talk. Professor Creed was going to have to put up or shut up. Either he had just gleaned or guessed something or he had real information. If he was jerking her around, he would pay for it. If he actually had information, then Lisa was going to make him cough it up.
It hadn't bothered Lisa Starling that he played the games he had. She'd learned to expect it whenever she had dealt with prisoners. It was a game for them, and it wasn't like Professor Creed had much to lose. But once the body of Mary Morales had been discovered, that changed things. No doubt as to who it was – there was the same horrible mutilations, the same bloody crime scene. The professor's games were simply an annoyance when their cost was measured in Lisa Starling's time. When the cost was an innocent life, then she found herself enraged by the idea. She knew that he would think the whole thing terribly amusing, and that enraged her more.
Just what are you going to do to make him talk? a voice asked her as she was brought back into the prison. The same captain greeted her. He seemed surprised to see her, but hid it behind a level of cool, detached professionalism that appealed oddly to her. He agreed to let her see Creed and brought her up to the cellblock.
Again, Lisa Starling sat in the visiting booth, a phone held to her ear. Again, the door to Professor Creed's cell opened and he walked through slowly, almost ambling. Again, those tiny, inhuman pupils locked on her own. Below them was a small, private smile as if appreciating a joke that only he could appreciate.
"Agent Starling," he said calmly, oh so softly. She had to strain to hear the voice through the receiver. "So nice to see you again."
"Professor Creed," Lisa said sharply.
Professor Creed's mouth turned down in disapproval. "Why travel all this way just to be snippy?" he asked. "Politeness, Agent Starling. I suspect you have something to ask me, anyway. Doesn't behoove you to be rude."
"Have you heard?" she asked directly.
"About the Bludgeon Man? Yes, actually, I have. We're allowed to have radios, you know, and I was able to hear it on the news. It seems he has struck again."
"Yes, he has," Lisa snapped. "Professor Creed, you know, you're going to die. If you help us, maybe we can help you."
Professor Creed chuckled. "And how would you help me, Agent Starling?"
"If you know his name, and you help us find him, I'll be willing to testify that you did," Lisa said. "Whether that is in front of a judge or in front of the governor. Might get you commuted to life in prison."
"Life in prison. What a wonderful gift. Help me, and you will try to keep the state from executing me, instead choosing to keep me in prison for the rest of my natural life." Professor Creed seemed to ponder the idea. "No guarantees, of course."
"I can promise I'd testify, that's it," Lisa admitted. "I can't promise you a commutation. But so help me God, if I find out that you had information that could have saved a life, I swear I'll do everything in my power to get you on that gurney as fast as I possibly can." Her eyes burned at him.
Professor Creed chuckled and smiled patronizingly. "You overestimate your power," he said. "My fate is in the hands of judges, not law enforcement. You have no authority to speed me into the death chamber any quicker than I would otherwise go. Tell me, have you figured out yet how he's able to do what he does without being overheard?"
Lisa did, but it hadn't been made public. And she certainly wasn't about to tell him. "We have some theories," she hedged.
Professor Creed chuckled. "You mean you won't tell me, because you're holding it back," he said calmly. "He's drugging the victims. You've almost assuredly found the drugs in the bloodstream. You may have had more difficulty finding the injection sites, that wouldn't surprise me. Beaten, bruised, burned, a tiny needle wound would be hard to find. You'll find one injection site…oh…on the arm, probably, and the other on the cheek or perhaps under the tongue." He grinned widely at her, displaying sharp teeth. "He sedates them and uses muscle relaxant afterwards so that they can't move. Isn't that correct, Agent Starling?"
The shock and surprise of having a man who'd been locked down maximum security for six years tell her things that only the task force knew forced Lisa Starling out of her chair. The drugs had been held back, and on a few victims they had been able to find needle marks. But Lisa and Sullivan had ordered that information held back, locked down tight. There were regular cops and FBI who weren't privy to that information. Yet behind the Plexiglass, Professor Creed knew. And where, too. Her eyes burned at Professor Creed. Driven completely by a combination of shock and sheer animal desire, she smacked the Plexiglass separating them. Her mouth worked.
"You know who he is!" she said sharply.
Professor Creed smiled widely and said nothing.
"Professor Creed, tell me who the Bludgeon Man is," Lisa panted.
Professor Creed stretched leisurely and shrugged.
"Why should I do that?" Professor Creed asked. "As you yourself said, you can't even guarantee me that you could get this death sentence off my head. You have little to offer, and frankly, you don't have the authority to demand that I tell you."
"You could save lives," Lisa said impetuously. It was so frustrating. The answer to the question she sought was right there, on the other side of the Plexiglass. She wanted to reach through it and shake him until he talked. The fact that another serial killer had once taunted a Starling with information about a killer wasn't lost on her.
No way am I going down that road. Besides, Detective Sullivan's cuter and he doesn't hang people up by their ribs.
"Save lives?" Professor Creed chuckled. "Now that would be new."
"You want to tell me," Lisa said urgently. "You wouldn't be playing this game if you didn't."
"I have information," Professor Creed agreed. "The question is, Agent Starling, what will you give me for that information?"
Lisa bit her lip. "We could…we could take you into federal custody. You'd be off Death Row."
"That would get me out of this unit, that is true. But I'd simply be trading one maximum-security facility for another. Don't tell me you can offer me even so much as medium security. You can't. And the state will fight you to execute me." He chuckled coldly. "Angela Curran's family is quite well off, and her father has made it his business to see that I will be put to death. As an FBI agent, even as the Deputy Chief of Behavioral Sciences, you don't have the firepower to match his pet politicians."
"Where are you getting your information from?" Lisa parried, knowing he was correct.
"Never mind that. What's important is that I do know." Professor Creed said.
"What do you know?" Lisa pursued. She was hooked and she knew it, and unfortunately, so did he. But the sight of the pitiful, broken bodies of the Bludgeon Man's victims had left its mark on her. If it took playing a killer's game to keep another living person from joining the sad ranks of those bodies, so be it.
"How much do you know, Professor Creed?" she demanded.
Professor Creed's small, private smile suddenly expanded into a knowing grin.
"Enough," he said. "I know his methods. I know why he kills. And yes, I do know his name. Enough for you to catch him, Agent Starling."
"Tell me who he is," Lisa Starling said between her teeth.
Professor Creed chuckled dryly and shook his head.
"So it seems I have something you want," he said calmly. "Marx said, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'. I have the ability to give you something you need, Agent Starling. Can you give me what I need?"
Lisa Starling stared hard at the caged killer beyond the Plexiglass. Part of her was very nervous to say what she was about to. God only knew what price he might demand. But to not deal with him was to play with the lives of innocents. And she was not willing to pay that price.
"What do you want?" she asked, and in that moment she knew she would give it to him.
Professor Creed sighed and looked off into space.
"Before my incarceration," he said lightly, "I used to go to the water on vacation. I owned a home on Keuka Lake, here in New York. Occasionally I went there. Before I owned that cottage, I went to Martha's Vineyard."
Those tiny pinpoint pupils fixed on her, seeming to dissect her even through the Plexiglass barrier.
"I won't tell you any more of what I know about the Bludgeon Man, Agent Starling. Nor shall I tell a living soul while I am here. I know perfectly well it's my fate to be executed here. So what I want, Agent Starling, is something that I can have."
"What do you want?" she repeated.
"I want to stand on the beach, with my bare feet in the Atlantic," he said simply.
Lisa Starling stopped and blinked. It sounded so poetic, here in this concrete factory of misery.
"You want what?" she asked.
"I'll be perfectly happy to tell what I know of the Bludgeon Man. But not to you, and not here. I'll tell a judge, in Boston, in open court. Federal or state makes no difference to me. I want to be housed for a night or two in a Boston jail. Whatever security measures are necessary makes no difference to me either, I'm not an unreasonable man. I do want my dinner to come from Legal Sea Foods in Boston. Have you tried it? Excellent fare, really, the best. And sometime during my sojourn in Boston, I want to be taken to Martha's Vineyard. With whatever security measures are necessary, of course. You may transport me in shackles and have as many guards as you see fit. And once there, I want twenty minutes to stand on the beach, without shoes, with my bare feet in the Atlantic Ocean."
Lisa Starling stared at the man in the visiting booth with a completely blank look on her face. His voice was completely calm, but not without power. He'd clearly been thinking about this for a long time, locked here in this blank place of concrete and steel. A simple dream, but not without power, something that had sustained him this long.
Could she give that to him? What he wanted was a little different that what she would have expected, but she thought so. There was a federal judge in Boston who tended to be receptive to the FBI; all she would need to do is make a few phone calls and see if a judge would be willing to subpoena him. It didn't seem likely he would fight the subpoena.
Dinner from Legal Sea Foods? Shit, she'd get it takeout and bring it to him herself. Getting him to Martha's Vineyard would be hard, but not impossible. She could sweet-talk the Marshal's Service. Lisa had learned how to sweet-talk them.
"If I do that for you…if I get you to Martha's Vineyard…are you going to tell the judge who the Bludgeon Man is?" Lisa Starling whispered. "No games? No lies?"
"Not a one," Professor Creed agreed, and held up his hand palm out. Oddly, Lisa believed him. "I know you can't put this together immediately, Agent Starling. But you will let me know, won't you?"
"I'll see what I can do," Lisa promised.
On the trip back, she felt completely confused and puzzled. Professor Creed was under sentence of death. His appeal to New York's Supreme Court had just been turned down. That put him on his federal appeals. To be blunt, the guy didn't have much longer to go. And all he wanted was a trip to Boston?
Then again, she had to allow, he hadn't been out of the prison for a few years. Only for court appearances, and his last court appearance was two years go. Perhaps the professor was resigned to his fate, especially if he was telling the truth about his victim's wealthy father determined to see him in the death chamber. Perhaps one more time at Martha's Vineyard would let him die happy.
Back in Boston, she told her staff about Professor Creed's offer. Agent Krause, who had legal training, volunteered to talk to the judge. Jason Sullivan, who was allowed to sit in on the FBI task force meeting as a liaison to the Boston PD's task force, opined that Lisa's first suspicions were correct. Creed knew he was done for and wanted one last trip to Boston before he was executed. Lisa nodded and tried not to think about how tall or handsome he was, as well as the fact that he didn't kill people or taunt her with information.
The law moves slowly, but it can be speeded along when needed. The judge was more than willing to grant the FBI task force a subpoena ordering Thomas Lawrence Creed, PhD, to report to the court and tell what he knew. A process server who was quite nervous to be on death row duly served Professor Creed in his cell. The professor examined the paperwork ordering him to report to the US Federal District Court in Boston at the end of the week and referred a copy to his guards, who began arranging his transport with the US Marshal's Service.
A few days after he had been served, Professor Creed politely asked one of the guards to send a ranking officer down to his cell. This request was granted, and the captain of the cellblock went down to his cell to see what he wanted.
"I would like to make a phone call, please," Professor Creed said politely.
"Who you going to call?" the captain asked.
"My cousin. Elisa Chesoyo from Philadelphia. We haven't spoken in a number of years, but she recently wrote me and told me she would like to speak with me again."
The captain shrugged. Death row inmates were allowed to make two ten-minute phone calls per week to family. This was the first time since the professor had arrived here that he had asked for such a call; up until now his family had largely disowned him. But if Creed wanted a call, it was fine with the captain. Might give them an extra measure to control him. Although Professor Creed had maintained a perfect disciplinary record on death row, he still made his guards nervous. If one of his relatives would talk to him, that was good; he'd mind his manners because he didn't want to lose phone privileges.
So the phone was brought down to Professor Creed's cell and placed inside the food slot. Professor Creed dialed the Philadelphia phone number on the postcard he had received and waited for a moment as it rang a few times. He certainly hoped she would pick up.
"Hello?" Susana Alvarez Lecter said.
"Elisa. It's Thomas. I got your postcard. I'm afraid we have only ten minutes."
"Okay," she said. "How are you, Thomas?"
"I'm all right," he said. "I do have some news. I'll be moved temporarily. I'll be testifying at the end of the week in a…certain matter. Very exciting."
"Really? When are you going?"
"I'm to appear in court at seven AM Friday," Professor Creed said.
"Well, that's great," Susana said calmly. "That ought to be interesting, to say the least. What are the rules on visitation there?"
Professor Thomas Creed knew that she had no intention of ever visiting him in the prison, and that was just fine by him. "You need to register with the prison and get checked out, and then they'll let you visit. It would be so nice to see you." He gave Susana the number she needed to call to register as a visitor, and she dutifully wrote it down and promised to check it out for the benefit of those listening in on the conversation.
"Okay, Thomas," Susana said. "I'll see what I can do to get up there and see you."
Professor Thomas Creed smiled and looked around his cell. He had a few things he needed to do in the next few days himself. He felt quite good, actually.
"I'll be waiting," he said.