The FBI office was its usual warren of activity. Agents headed in and out to the street. Phones rang. Boston policemen still stood guard over the entrances and exits. The offices set aside for the Bludgeon Man task force were just as busy as the normal duties of the FBI's Boston field office.
Lisa Starling's office was quiet and calm. She sat at her desk, staring at a VCR and a video monitor that had been brought in. The videotape of the Thornton murder had been forward to the Bludgeon Man investigation. The murder was all BPD, but Jason had asked her to have a look, and she was willing to for his sake. Lisa knew it wasn't the Bludgeon Man from the first time she'd seen the tape. The victimology was all wrong. And the MO didn't match. A male victim instead of a female, killed very openly. Instead of being killed quietly in his own home, the victim had been killed in a horrific spectacle.
And of course, the Bludgeon Man didn't have an accomplice.
Lisa rewound the tape a bit. She heard excited female voices and heard the clattering of chunky heels on concrete steps. The camera zigged and zagged crazily, making her feel a bit sick in watching it. It zoomed in on a blonde woman smiling with embarrassment. She wore a white baseball cap with the word Bride inscribed on it in purple script. A makeshift veil covered the back.
"Here we are, live at the T, and we're gonna hit another couple bars," an off-screen voice said merrily. "Susan, what do you think of all this? Your last night as a single woman?"
"You guys are too much," answered the blushing woman.
Lisa tensed. She knew what happened next. The bachelorette party walked up to the street level, carousing as they went. The view of the camcorder suddenly jerked far up and around, rendering an effect not unlike a roller coaster. Jeremy Thornton's balcony was in the top third of the frame. An excited cry came from the woman holding the camcorder.
Lisa could see one large figure holding another in his arms. A third shorter figure stood back on the terrace, apparently watching. Lisa focused on it and felt her tongue go dry. She'd prayed for this not to be.
Then Jeremy Thornton went over the side and out of the frame. A white line trailed where he had fallen. Then the camcorder was coming back down, tracing alongside the building. It caught up with Jeremy.
The voice of the receptionist, again, but this time her voice was tinged with shock. "Oh my God, what the hell is that?"
Thornton was more or less in the middle of the frame when the rope came to an end. There was only a brief stop, and then his body was continuing to fall. His head remained in the noose for a moment or two. Screams of terror from offscreen permeated the scene. The camera jerked up again, then violently down.
When the camera jerked up, the edge of Jeremy Thornton's balcony was just barely in view in the top of the frame, and it was angled. Lisa had to tilt her head to look clearly. Two figures. The shorter one tilted its head and waved twice from the wrist, the way one might wave byebye to a child. A glint of gold came as the light caught a ring on the figure's hand. Then the two figures left the terrace and disappeared into the apartment. They'd been unable to enhance the video resolution any further. Identifying the perpetrators of this would be impossible from the tape alone.
But Lisa knew.
Next to the shorter figure was a light fixture mounted on the exterior wall. The homicide investigators from Boston PD – top notch, in Lisa's view – had gone out and measured it for her. Using that as a guide, she could estimate that the shorter figure was somewhere between five-three and five-seven. The taller figure was probably between six feet even and six-four. She swallowed and felt her stomach churn.
Susana Alvarez was five foot four. Professor Thomas Creed was six foot two.
She rewound the tape and paused it, watching the smaller figure wave byebye. She could make out brown hair on the smaller figure. But that meant nothing. Hair could be dyed. The resolution was cruddy at this distance, but she thought the figure was wearing a skirt. Nervously, she tapped a pen and bit her lips nervously. She didn't want it to be Susana. That would've meant that Susana was back in the US. If she was back in the US, she might get caught. If she got caught, then Lisa Starling was going to lose her job, her boyfriend (is he that now? a little voice asked her), and trade it for a prison cell in another country. Besides, if she was back in the US and had freed the professor, then she'd added a few more notches to her body count. Susana had been quiescent for four years; interest in capturing her had been waning. This would fan the flames of law enforcement interest to full strength.
"Don't be Susana," Lisa told the figure on the tape in a low, tense voice. "Be somebody else. Some little fangirl he met on the Internet or something. A Creedphile."
The idea was inescapable, though. There were a lot of things that matched between Susana and the woman in the frame. She was the right height and the right build. The right hair color, too. Susana tilted her head most of the time, a mannerism she had picked up from her father. There hadn't been any forensic evidence worth mentioning in the apartment. Susana would know how to cover for that; she didn't think Creed knew as much about criminology. The escape of Professor Creed had been pulled off with the same sort of utter ruthlessness, military precision, and speed that hallmarked Susana's other means-to-an-end crimes.
And to top it off, Susana would probably wear a skirt to a murder.
Her suspicions of Professor Creed had a stronger basis. On her desk was a fax from Cornell University, where Creed had taught and Thornton had gotten his bachelor's. It was a brief synopsis of the charges of academic dishonesty filed against Thornton by Creed. The charges had been dismissed; understandably the university had no bylaws specifying what happened when the accusing professor was arrested for murdering several of his students.
No, she thought. C'mon. Please? Four years of peace and I meet a really nice guy and I really, really don't need my cousin in my life right now.
There was a way she could find out for sure. She hadn't even bothered to think about it for four years. She'd have to do it quietly. But as she watched the videotape, she knew it was the only way she could know for sure. The worse thing was that she'd have to do it quietly. Neither the FBI nor Boston PD could find out about it.
Both Lisa Starling and Rinaldo Pazzi had acted contrary to the wishes of their law-enforcement masters at one point in their lives. Of these two, Lisa Starling's rationale was more respectable. Rinaldo Pazzi had elected to ignore his duty to bring Hannibal Lecter to justice for simple money. Had Lisa Starling not ignored hers, she would have spent twenty years in a foreign prison and her cousin would still have gotten away.
But they were both in the same situation now. In order to verify to herself and either qualm the worries in her gut or solidify them, she could not act as a law enforcement officer. She was a bounty hunter, outside the bounds of the law. Normally, she could have gotten a French arrest warrant for Susana in no time at all, and all of Susana's money would not have stopped that. But if she did so now, she would have to explain why she'd hidden it away for four long years. And after that, an arrest warrant bearing her name would inevitably come to the FBI.
Nervously, staring at the screen with glassy eyes, Lisa Starling arose from her chair and walked out of the FBI's Boston field office. The Boston policeman on the front door guard looked at her warily as she left.
"I'm just running out for some lunch," she explained.
"You want an escort? Here, I'll call you one," he said, lifting his walkie-talkie.
Lisa's heart began to pound. "No, that's okay," she said. "Look, this is all well and good, but I'm a big girl. And I'll be back in ten minutes. Working lunch."
"Okay," the guard said, raising an eyebrow.
Lisa headed out onto the sidewalk and swallowed nervously. She'd have half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, before she was missed. Her stride was quick and nervous and her stomach roiling as she headed for the T station. It wasn't that far to the Blue Line. Lisa hopped on the train and sat down, listening to the shriek of the train as it squealed against the rails. The T was nicely anonymous, more than her car – with the concurrent check-out with the parking-lot cops – would have been. The train car was pretty full, but she managed to find a seat.
This was madness. She was breaking the peace that had held for so long. And Susana hadn't broken it. Had she? Please God no. Or was it simply Lisa's own desperate attempts at self-delusion? She had a good job, now she'd met a nice guy. Who knew where things were going, but he was nice and seemed interested in her. And now, Susana appearing in her life again, bringing with her the shadowy threat of twin prison cells, one for each woman. Why hadn't the deal been enough for Susana? Hadn't it kept the peace for this long?
She got off at the stop for Logan Airport. Fifteen minutes now. The airport was also full, also quite anonymous, and no one paid any attention at all to the blonde woman in a blue suit as she entered the Departing Flights area. If she actually went to the departure gates, she'd attract attention because she would have to declare her weapon, but she had no intention of going there.
Lisa followed the signs for the baggage claim instead. Her heels clacked noisily against the floor, but no one paid her the slightest heed. Against the wall was the first thing she sought. A vending machine, selling prepaid phonecards. Lisa approached it and fumbled in her purse for some money. She settled on a twenty-dollar card, not knowing how much it would be to call France.
How far ahead was it there? Would it still be open? She wasn't sure. The machine took her twenty and spat a plastic card out at her. She picked it up and examined the instructions printed on one side. There were plenty of phone booths by the baggage claim. Hopefully it would work. She selected an empty one and consulted the card again. There was a 1-800 number she had to dial, which was good. Just in case they tracked it, they'd see the 800 number and have to chase down the records through the long-distance company.
A sudden lump rose in Lisa's throat. She dialed the number and then punched the country code for France. The numbers she dialed were written down nowhere; they were engraved instead in Lisa Starling's memory, where no other FBI agent would ever be able to find them. Lisa had tracked her cousin down to France as doggedly as she had tracked her down in Virginia. But then, once she'd obtained her cousin's name and information, she'd been stopped. If Susana were caught, Lisa would go down with her. So with no small regret she'd committed her cousin's information to memory and then burned the papers. Only once – for Susana's kid's first birthday – had Lisa dropped by, just so Susana would know Lisa had her. Ever since then, she'd remained solely on her side of the Atlantic.
Electronic beeps and boops sounded in her ear as she dialed the rest of the numbers. Her hand stopped a few times and she found she had to force herself to dial.
Madness, madness.
The phone rang a few times. It sounded different from phones in the States. Lisa tapped the card against the phone and shifted from foot to foot nervously. What was she going to say?
Suddenly the phone was picked up. Lisa started and gripped the handset tighter. Her cousin's voice sounded in her ear for the first time in four years.
"Suzanne Arsenault Lesage," her cousin said calmly.
"Susana?" Lisa whispered.
Susana did not seem to realize it. Instead, she answered with a flood of French that Lisa didn't even try to catch. Lisa repeated her cousin's name a few more times before realizing what had happened. Voicemail. She was listening to the voicemail box of the only woman on the FBI's Ten Most-Wanted List.
Lisa flushed red as she realized what had happened. She thought she'd heard something about 'receptionist' and 'zero' in there, so she hit zero. French voicemail systems couldn't be that different. She was rewarded by an electronic tone and a synthesized voice that told her something she couldn't understand. She hoped like hell that it was 'Your call is being transferred'.
Then there was a human voice answering the line, also speaking in French.
"Excuse me," Lisa said, feeling suddenly quite dumb. "Do you speak English?"
The voice paused for a moment. "Oui, I do," the young woman said in accented English. "Are you a patient here?"
"No," Lisa admitted and closed her eyes. "I was looking for someone there." A story occurred to her. "Well, you see, I knew one of the doctors there when I was in college. I did a semester abroad in France and we got to know each other. I'm going to be going to Paris in the next few weeks, and I wanted to know if she wanted to get together for coffee or something."
It took the girl a few moments to respond, and Lisa wondered if she understood everything.
"And which doctor was it you were looking for?" she asked.
"Dr. Lesage. Suzanne Arsenault Lesage," Lisa supplied. Hearing her own voice speak that name made her shiver.
"Oh," the girl said instantly. "I am so sorry." Her accent transformed the last word into something mystical. "Dr. Lesage is not in ze office."
Lisa's throat hitched. Her knees jellied. "Oh," she said, forcing herself to remain calm. "Is she in surgery? I can try her back later."
"Non, I….Pardon. Dr. Lesage is not here. She went to a surgical conference for a week. The voice paused before delivering the final blow to Lisa's last clinging hope. "In the United States. Philadelphia. Would you like ze number to her hotel?"
All the pieces fell into place in Lisa Starling's mind, and tears rose to her eyes.
Dr. Lesage attending a surgical conference in Philadelphia. A perfectly normal bit of cover that would have attracted absolutely zero attention from any immigration officer in any airport in the United States. She knew better than to even try and call INS and ask if a Suzanne Arsenault Lesage had entered the country. Susana knew better than that. But it would be a French doctor somewhere, with impeccable papers both real and fake.
She'd gone to Philadelphia. Philadelphia, where a woman named Elisa Chesoyo who claimed to be Thomas Creed's cousin lived. Elisa Chesoyo, whose name meant Hey Lisa, it's me in Argentine slang. And who had never had a driver's license, Social Security number, or any minutiae of existence except a prepaid cell phone. A cell phone that Professor Creed had called a few days before he escaped. The very first family phone call the good professor had made since he went to Death Row. He'd told her where he was going. From there, Susana had merely needed to plot out the probable route, waylay the van, and carry out her usual precision raid.
Susana is here. Susana did this.
And she's in this city.
"No, thank you," Lisa replied robotically. Her voice sounded far away. She hung up the phone and stood there trembling in the busy airport for several minutes.
What the hell does she want?
…
The time was approaching. He'd felt better for a few weeks since his last job. A job. That made him feel better and more important than his actual job did. That was dull drudgery. He wiped butts and changed sheets for a living. Miserable, really.
But he was beginning to feel the edginess he usually did when it was coming up on time for another one. Some days, he had to fight the urge to scream and clamp his hands to his head. The rage was always there, but after a job he was able to tamp it down.
The one old biddy he'd had to deal with at work had really tried his patience. Heh. Patient trying my patience. It was a dumb joke. The doctors didn't have to put up with patients screaming at them. Oh no, the patients were ready to kneel down and kiss the ass of anyone wearing a white coat. Like they knew so damn much. The nurses didn't get such worship, but they at least had their ways. A patient who ticked off the nurses soon learned not to repeat whatever behavior they had done. But him…oh, no. He was the lowest of the low. An orderly. There to change bedpans, wipe butts, change sheets. If they let him take someone's blood pressure, that was supposed to be a good day.
The Bludgeon Man sat in his living room, watching TV. He hated the small apartment. The rooms were tiny and confining. They reminded him of prison. The tiny cells he'd been obliged to occupy. Thanks to the bitch, he'd ended up serving his entire sentence in solitary confinement. Protective custody, they'd called it. They hadn't known how to deal with a prisoner like him. Well, they hadn't known how to deal with what the bitch had done to him. And then once he'd gotten to prison, and the bitch had finished the job she'd begun.
So he sat on the chair he'd scavenged from the curb and watched his tiny TV desultorily. The evening news was on. The anchorwoman was perfectly calm as a stick figure hanging from a noose appeared above her right shoulder. The actual footage of Jeremy Thornton's death was not shown.
"Police still have no leads in the bizarre murder of Jeremy Thornton," the announcer said calmly. "Detective Lieutenant Jason Sullivan of the Boston Police Department gave a brief statement today in which he stated that the murder was not considered related to the Bludgeon Man murders, but that police considered the murder to be of the highest importance. They are still investigating. Police did release this photograph of the believed perpetrators. "
A picture flashed up on the screen. Lisa Starling would have recognized it as the man and woman on Jeremy Thornton's balcony. The Bludgeon Man leaned forward. He could not make out any facial features, owing to the distance and poor resolution of the videotape. A few moments later, a composite drawing of the man, then the woman, appeared on the screen. In all truth, they did not resemble Susana Alvarez Lecter or Professor Creed terribly well. But the Bludgeon Man leaned forward.
The bitch.
He knew almost instantly that the bitch had done this. It was her style. The rage rose up in him again, stronger than it had been since he'd been released from prison. He paid no more attention to the TV. Instead, his eyes were focused on the past, remembering the bitch and the rage and what she had done to him ten years ago.
He hadn't been known then as the Bludgeon Man. No, back then, his name had simply been Darryl Schantz, and the police hadn't been tracking him. Back then, he'd been an orderly just like now. But just as now, that had been his job. His work had been different then. His work had been rape. He'd done the job on a few bitches already. At the time of The Bitch, though, the police had just been beginning to realize that the attacks were related.
The day of The Bitch had begun as any other. He'd gone into the hospital, just like any other day. He worked on the surgical floor. His contempt for everyone and everything was uncontrollable. But his work gave him the ability to withstand this. They might be snotty to him at work, but once he had one of 'em tied down, her underwear ripping, her eyes lit with fear, they learned their place in the world real quick.
He'd seen her then. He hadn't known her real name and wouldn't until her capture in Virginia several years later, when he was serving his own prison term. Back then, he'd known her as Alina Lektor, as everyone on the hospital staff did. She was a surgical resident in her last year. Definitely the best-looking resident on the staff. Those maroon eyes and delicate features attracted some attention; her trim body attracted more.
That day had been like any other for so long. Whiny patients wanting glasses of water, trips to the bathroom, and clean sheets. It hadn't been until much later that he'd seen her. She was out of surgery and off shift. She'd gone down to the doctor's lounge to change. That was another annoying little bit of rank. No lounge for the working joes like him; that was only for the highfalutin doctors.
Boston had been undergoing a rare heat wave, and she'd gone into the lounge wearing bloody scrubs and emerged in a short skirt and sandals with heels. Just about every male on the staff, from senior surgeon to janitor, had gotten themselves an eyeful. She had thrown her lab coat over this ensemble and started calmly issuing orders to the nurses. He couldn't catch everything. The nurses simply sighed and answered "Yes, Dr. Lektor."
"Oh," she completed, walking down the hall to the elevator, "Mr. Parkfield in 123 is going to need some extra care. He just had a colostomy and he's got arthritis in his hands. He's going to need a hand changing his bag." She smiled with the gallows humor that medical personnel had towards the revolting side of their job. "Make sure you've got an orderly handy with clean sheets. He's not a bad patient, but he's very embarrassed about it. Try and spare his dignity, he's really a polite man."
"Yes, doctor," the charge nurse said. Darryl's eyes touched the eyes of the woman he knew as Alina Lektor. She smiled at him calmly, the vaguely patronizing smile of a woman who knows she is better than the man she is looking at. Part of him wanted to gag. So, he got to change the shitty sheets of her old-geezer patient, huh? He'd show her. He was a man, not her personal shit-boy.
To make matters worse, Mr. Parkfield did indeed spill his colostomy bag. It freaking reeked. He ought to sue the hospital; these were unsafe working conditions. And meanwhile, Dr. Alina Lektor was at home, kicking back in front of her TV or with her boyfriend or something. She'd have a rich guy – another doctor or a lawyer or something. No way would she ever deign to even talk to him.
After he cleaned up the room, he found himself much calmer. One of the nurses complimented him on cleaning up the crap and told him he was a good guy. Darryl Schantz was quite calm as he accepted her compliment.
"Just my job," he said.
For the rest of his shift, he was preternaturally calm. He got new scrubs and washed up. He was pleasant to the patients, even old shitty Parkfield. At eleven o'clock, he punched out and headed home. By that time, a large grin crossed his face.
He had been able to put up with the shift because he'd decided to punish Alina Lektor. A few women had already learned what it meant to learn humility at the hands of Darryl Schantz. He wasn't quite as psychotically violent as he would be ten years later, once he was released on an unsuspecting world, but he took proud snotty bitches and made them weeping, violated victims. Good for them to learn. At the time, Boston PD was beginning to connect the dots of his crimes. Although he didn't know it, a young agent at the FBI's Boston office, planning a career move to Quantico shortly, had been asked to have a look at the crime scenes and see what she could tell them.
Darryl Schantz was not yet the Bludgeon Man. But he had already developed a lot of the techniques he would use once he became the Bludgeon Man years later. He put together his rape-kit, consisting of restraints, some weapons, and drugs. He'd scored the muscle relaxant and pentathol separately a few months back. Alina would learn, all right. She wasn't the only one who knew how to use drugs. Alina. He wouldn't bother no more with calling her 'Doctor'. She'd be on a first name basis. Maybe he'd make her call him 'Mr. Schantz'. That'd be a good comedown for her. But for him, she'd be Alina.
It wasn't until years later that he would learn that Alina Lektor was the pseudonym of Susana Alvarez Lecter, hiding in plain sight as was her admittedly arrogant wont. Plenty of people joked about it upon hearing the name. No one – including him – knew that the resemblance in the name was deliberately engineered, and that Alina Lektor was indeed Hannibal Lecter's daughter.
Finding her home address was not terribly difficult – he knew the janitor and was able to borrow the keys to the closed HR office without much problem. She lived in a townhouse in Back Bay. That alone Darryl found incredible. A resident? And she lived on Commonwealth Ave? Darryl did not know that she owned the home outright through a cover identity, but the address was enough. He lived in a tiny apartment in a slummy area. And she had all that? Oh, she had to learn.
He packed up his kit in a backpack and threw it on his shoulder. The T allowed him to get close enough to her place; he'd walk the rest. No one paid any real heed to the man in jeans and a T-shirt, walking through the streets calmly, minding his own business. Even as he made it to Back Bay, no one looked twice at him. Had he loitered or glowered at anyone, they might have noticed him, but he didn't. He just headed up the sidewalk. His purposes remained safely hidden in his skull.
He stared at Alina Lektor's home bitterly, knowing that he'd never have a home like that. Well, he'd teach the little bitch a lesson. Calmly, he walked up and knocked on the door. She'd know who he was, so he couldn't tell her he was UPS or something. But he'd tell her there was something up with one of her patients. That'd allay her suspicion long enough for him to get the door open. Then it would be party time.
He knocked on the door and waited. He shifted his bag on his shoulder. In one hand, he gripped the barrel of the syringe. Pentathol to put her down, just like they did in the OR. A few moments later, the delicate features and maroon eyes of Alina Lektor stared out at him.
"Hello?" she asked, and then started in surprise as she recognized him. A look of puzzlement mixed with distrust came over her face. "Darryl? What are you doing here."
"Um, well, Dr. Lektor, I was in the neighborhood and I recognized your car on the street," he said, the lie coming easily to his lips. "Some guys were trying to break into it. I ran them off, but I wanted to let you know."
"Oh." She tilted her head and observed him carefully. "Is it damaged?"
Darryl was tense but calm, looking back and forth. He'd seen her driving before. She had a black Jaguar convertible.
"Little scratch on the paint but it's not too bad. They were about to break the window. I yelled at em and they ran off."
"Well, thank you," she said, looking at him and weighing something in her mind.
Darryl decided the time was now and grabbed the knob. He threw his entire body weight against it, forcing it open easily. Alina blinked at him and staggered back. He came out with the hypodermic and grinned. The needle gleamed overhead. For just a moment, Alina Lektor looked as frightened and surprised as any woman attacked in her own home.
"Gonna teach you something, bitch," he grunted.
But Alina Lektor was not like the others. She was Susana Alvarez Lecter, a woman capable of atrocities beyond Darryl Schantz's rather pedestrian horrors. And she reacted swiftly. As he jabbed the needle down, she grabbed his wrist. Amazing strength clamped down on his wrist. She brought her foot up and jammed it into his side, twice. She still wore the spike-heeled sandals, and he felt the heel jab twice into his stomach and grunted in pain. On his shirt two red flowers began to bloom.
She twisted his wrist neatly and he heard a snap. The syringe fell to her foyer floor. A bolt of agony shot up his arm. His right hand went limp in her grasp. He tried to turn and run, just get the hell away, but her grip on him was too strong. She grabbed the back of his head and rammed his forehead into an oak shelf on her wall. Stars flew before his eyes.
He only barely felt the needle prick his arm. His own needle. How humiliating. But then consciousness spun slowly from him and everything whirled into a pool of black.
When he awoke, he wasn't in her home anymore. It looked like an abandoned factory or something. Dirty gray walls and junk all around. He was lying on a cot, his wrists tied to the sides with duct tape. Another piece covered his mouth. His broken wrist was neatly splinted with two pieces of wood and duct tape.
Susana Alvarez Lecter stood over him. There was something different in her face, something he had never seen before. During her residency, Susana had learned to act appropriately, just as her father had during his. Surgery suited her. She treated her patients with clinical care and concern. She disliked losing patients, even though it happened in surgery, and was determined to keep it as low as possible. Rarely, an older man who reminded her of her father might gain special favor from her. Her entire reason for becoming a doctor was because she thought he would have approved.
But now, she was not in her detached, clinical surgeon persona – her Alina personality, as she thought of it. No, for the first time since she'd returned to medical school after pulling a bullet out of her cousin's chest, she was Susana again. Her eyes bored into his. A sardonic smirk crossed her face.
"Well, Darryl," she said, "looks like you've been a naughty boy." In one hand she held his bag and she emptied it out. "Quite the little kit you've put together. You've put a lot of thought and work into this, haven't you?"
"Let me up," he snarled.
She ignored him. "Too bad your victim selection skills aren't as up to scratch." She chuckled and shook her head. "Boy, did you ever pick the wrong girl."
"Let me up, you cunt," he growled.
Susana looked down and him and smiled an irretrievably cold smile.
"Cunt," she repeated. "You use that word expecting me to recoil and cower in fear. I can assure you, that won't work with me."
"What the hell do you think this is?" he asked. "Let me up now, bitch, or you will cower in fear."
"Not from you," she replied airily. "Darryl, old boy, I'll tell you, I never once thought that one of my coworkers was a serial rapist." She chuckled coldly. "I was going to be your number four, was it?"
A slight shiver traveled down his spine. How the hell had she known that? Was she gonna go to the cops? Naw, she couldn't possibly.
She saw the unspoken question and answered it. "Sodium pentathol, Darryl. You must've waited until the drug lockup was unguarded, didn't you? I have my own supply, you know. I'm allowed to, but that's another thing entirely. I gave you your own shot, and then started you on some more post-op. Not enough to put you to sleep." She chuckled again. "But enough to make you answer a few questions for me." She reached over his head and removed a cassette from a cassette player.
"You owned up to quite a bit, Darryl."
"Don't mean shit."
"Oh yes, it does. Do you have a good attorney, Darryl? I hope and trust that you do. You're going to need one." Her expression changed, and suddenly the sardonic expression was gone from her face. Her contempt for him was real and not at all humorous.
"I find men like you revolting," she said. "Things like that disgust me. Quite simply I believe you belong in prison, Darryl…and I don't say that lightly."
Prison. Shit. She was right: he couldn't afford a lawyer and he'd end up having to cop a plea. Just another way that guys like him ended up getting the shaft. Maybe he could talk her out of it. Sweat beaded up on his brow. He tried to look pathetic. "Listen," he said. "I got problems. I'll get help. I'll never do it again, I swear."
The sardonic expression came back to Susana Alvarez Lecter's face.
"Oh, I agree with you there, Darryl," she said coldly. "You'll never do it again."