Author's note: Here we are, another chapter of this story. A little angst in lieu of holiday spirit.
The townhouse on Commonwealth Avenue looked like any other. It had gone unoccupied for years. Twelve years ago, this was where Susana Alvarez Lecter had lived while she completed her residency. After completing it, she had moved on. The FBI had eventually tracked it down, but there was no trace of her.
And now, for the first time in over a decade, Susana pulled into the driveway of the townhouse and looked around. The electric company had turned the power back on for her. Good. Professor Creed eyed the townhouse and nodded.
"A beautiful home," he said.
"Thank you. It's not quite so fancy inside. I didn't want to stick out." Susana took out her key and unlocked the front door. After the FBI had raided her townhouse – long after she was gone – she had sold it to another one of her identities. While still holed up in the suite, Susana had arranged for the power to be turned on and for a cleaning company to come neaten the place up for her.
And they had done their job well. The townhouse was quite neat and bright. The refrigerator door was closed. Susana opened it and looked inside. There was no dust or mold to be seen in the fridge, which one might expect after it having been out of service for twelve years. She nodded approvingly.
The place seemed oddly normal. The furnishings were simple and tasteful. It looked like any young professional might have lived here. No one looking in would have suspected it was the home of a woman wanted for multiple counts of murder.
Susana had left most of the furniture here, as well as basic supplies she might need if she was ever in the area. There were false identity documents in the closet wall of her bedroom. There was cash hidden under the floorboards of the closet. And there were simpler, more prosaic things: cups, dishes, clothing, and the like.
Professor Creed nodded approvingly at the inside of the home. Despite her disclaimer, the townhouse was very nice. She had taste; even if she had throttled it back some. And that made sense; most residents did not earn a lot of money.
Calmly, Susana quickly ran through the townhouse. The cleaning service had turned down the beds. She glanced in her master bathroom and the mirror reflected her visage for the first time in twelve years. She unpacked a few bags. Just a few things, really.
Susana was confident in her ability to handle Darryl Schantz. She knew she was smarter than he was; she was probably stronger too. But that didn't mean she was foolish. She unpacked a small-frame Beretta and slipped it into a holster. Like her mother, Susana held the slightly odd belief that the single greatest contributor to the equal rights movement was Samuel Colt. She'd never understood why more women didn't go armed.
Was Darryl too much of a coward to show? It was possible. When you came down to it he was a coward. Instead of standing up and fighting in prison, he'd gone into protective custody. That amused Susana; during her much briefer incarceration, her attorneys had fought to get her placed into general population, out of administrative segregation.
But she also knew that anger towards her burned deep. After all, she'd taken a serial rapist and made a woman out of him. Perhaps now she'd finish the job; breast implants weren't that hard to put in.
Well, if Darryl wimped out on her, she'd simply give Lisa something cryptic to hold her over until Susana was safely out of the country. Her boyfriend gave Susana a bit more pause. He seemed to be more gung-ho. She supposed Lisa would set him straight.
She called Darryl's home number again from her cell phone. It rang fifteen times. Susana assumed that to mean he was coming. Now it was just time to get little Lisa here and watch the fun.
…
A cup of coffee and a neck rub had done a bit to calm Jason down, and Lisa was a bit more pleased. For a moment she found herself wondering. She'd never quite understood why her mother had tried so hard to mollify her father when he got mad. She'd always thought she would be different with her own husband. But then work had gotten in the way, and she'd been more interested in climbing the ladder at the FBI. She'd done pretty well, she thought, putting away a few serial killers over those years – including both Susana and Professor Creed.
Now she had a man in her life for the first time since…what? College? And there it was. The master's-level psych training, her position as Deputy Chief, all of it stuff she'd worked so hard for, and as soon as her man started yelling she was immediately the submissive hausfrau, trying to coo and pacify and calm him down as her mother had done to her father.
I bet Susana doesn't have these problems, she thought. Then again, she allowed, a lover's spat between Susana and Professor Creed was likely to be pretty damned horrific. She remembered searching the professor's house. They'd found drawings in his workroom of different ideas. Professor Creed was a pretty good artist. He was also one demented monkey. Those pictures flitted briefly through her mind and she forced them away.
The telephone rang. Both Lisa and Sullivan jumped. Sullivan grabbed the extension in the living room. Lisa picked up the one in the kitchen. A slow feeling of dread invaded her stomach.
"Hello?" Sullivan demanded ebulliently.
"Ah, Detective Sullivan," Susana Alvarez Lecter said. "Good evening. I trust you and Lisa made your way out of the cuffs all right."
"We did," Sullivan said. "You'll be seeing them real soon yourself. You and your crazy professor."
Susana was silent for a moment. "Detective, there's no need to be rude," she said finally. "If you don't want my help in catching the Bludgeon Man, then fine. So be it. I'll simply leave the area, where you'll never find me."
Sullivan let out a breath. Lisa jumped in.
"Susana," she said, "don't hang up. Just wait a minute. It's all right."
Sullivan turned and stared at her with a hard glance she had never seen on his face before.
"Very well," Susana said calmly. "Drop by my place, if you will. The FBI's searched it, so I know that you do have the address. The Bludgeon Man will be here in half an hour."
Sullivan grinned a very hard grin.
"My killer for yours, Lisa, just as I said." Susana chuckled. "And Detective…if you're planning on bringing down some extra police to try and bring me into custody…I hope you've got a good frequent-flyer plan. You'll need it."
Lisa sighed. Already she knew what it seemed Susana did: that Sullivan was planning to capture all three. A hat trick of murderers. And if he did, he'd be damning her to a prison sentence on the other side of the world.
"A few ground rules, if you please. Just the two of you. Between the four of us, bringing the Bludgeon Man down should be easy. I did it myself once; I assure you it isn't that hard."
"So that's it?" Sullivan challenged. "We show up, you give us the Bludgeon Man?"
"Indeed," Susana said. "Contrary to what you may think of me, Detective, I'm not pure evil. I'm willing to make a fair trade. Remember, if you please, I could have simply skipped town with Professor Creed and left you to your own devices. You'd have caught him eventually, to be sure. But how many people might have died in the interim?"
"Fine," Sullivan said, and grinned a shark's grin.
"See you soon," Susana said, and hung up.
Jason Sullivan replaced the phone in its cradle and bunched his hands into fists. He grinned again.
"Now that was a big mistake," he said, grinning. Lisa hung up the kitchen phone. She walked into the living room on shaky legs. He had to understand. He had to.
"Jay?" she asked, her voice faint with fright. "Jay, I need to talk to you."
"What's to say?" he asked. His tone sounded jolly. "I know she thinks we'll give her Creed in return for the Bludgeon Man, but we're not."
"Jay, please," she said.
"Look," he said, "I'm not unreasonable. If they help catch the Bludgeon Man, they'll get credit for that. Maybe they could commute Creed to life in prison, maybe give her the same deal instead of the death penalty. I got no problem with that. But they're going down. All of them. I'm gonna make some calls, get a bunch of boyos together, and off they all go."
"Jay, we can't," she said, and pulled out a kitchen chair. "Please. I need…I need you to listen to me."
Jason Sullivan tilted his head and stared at his girlfriend.
Lisa Starling had prayed that she never had to tell her story. Especially to him. She knew what he was: a good cop, through and through. She had feared his reaction to this, to knowing that she had not only let a murderer go free, but that she would continue to do so.
She felt tears rise to her eyes. Her stomach churned. Her voice was shaky. For a moment she thought she might throw up. But she gritted her teeth, forced her tears back as best she was able, and soldiered on.
"Four years ago….when Susana killed all those people in Behavioral Sciences," she began. "I went down to Argentina after her. I didn't have permission. I…I just went and did it. "
Sullivan nodded, his mien puzzled.
"I…I tracked her down to her house. She was living totally openly down there, under her own name and everything. I think she hadn't had time to move anything to another identity. She had help when she…when she attacked. It was this crazy guy named Luke Taylor. I'd shot him back in the United States. She got him down and was nursing him back to health, I guess."
Lisa's eyes were blank, focused only on the past. Her body trembled. But she had to see this through. He had to understand why he couldn't arrest Susana. She felt weak and dirty and despicable. He would hate her. How could he not? She'd sold out her own colleagues and allowed their murderer to go free.
"I…I went in the house and tried to arrest them," she said. "He had a knife. He tried to stab me. I shot him."
Sullivan shrugged. "No biggie," he said. "I mean, it's not nice, but I've had to shoot people. Self-defense. You have to sometimes. That's what separates people like us from people like them."
A freshet of tears wracked Lisa as she continued. "No," she insisted.
"Down there…down there the police were in her pocket. Must've been for years. She took the evidence. But we took hers, so she thought it was fair play."
"What are you talking about, we took hers?" Sullivan said. "Lisa, hon, you're talking crazy. Look, I know, she's your cousin and she's scary as hell, but you gotta show some backbone here. They're the bad guys. We're the good guys. It's gonna be OK."
"We're not always the good guys," Lisa said softly. It was easier to admit the FBI's malfeasance than her own. She swallowed roughly. "The FBI wouldn't turn over evidence in her case to her attorneys," she explained. "The judge finally…he told them to turn it over or he would throw out the charges against her. It wasn't me, not that." A sobbing breath escaped her. "So the US Attorney indicted her for a murder she didn't do. Murder of Ardelia Mapp and attempted murder…attempted murder on me. They knew she hadn't done it."
Sullivan smiled and put his hand on her shoulder, patting it gently.
"Lis, hon, it's all right," he said. "It's all OK. They tried to screw her over. It happens. Cops get like that with cop-killers. Tell you what. I know, she's your cousin, you've got some loyalties. I know how that is. My dad's younger brother used to be a hellion. He did some time when he was young. Finally he straightened out. Don't get all hinky on me. I'll tell you what, Lis, together, you and me, we'll make sure they don't try anything on her they're not supposed to. They got enough to try her on that she did. And c'mon, it's not like a kangaroo court here. If she needs evidence, she'll get it, or they'll throw out the charges just like before. That's how the system works. You know that, right?"
"Jason, you don't understand," she whispered. A wave of nausea worked in her throat. But she had to carry this through. She closed her eyes and babbled the rest as quickly as she could.
"Susana hid the evidence. The knife the guy used. I told one of the cops I shot him. I didn't know how to say it in Spanish. They…they arrested me and put me in jail. Murder one, I guess, or whatever they call it down there. I didn't know what to do. Without the knife I couldn't claim self-defense. I mean…you have to understand. I was in prison. They were telling me if I plea-bargained they would give me twenty years in prison and let me serve my time in an American prison. Otherwise I'd be looking at life without parole. I was desperate. I knew if I went to trial I'd lose."
"I…she came to me, Jason. She came to me and she told me she could fix it all. She could get me out. She got the evidence, and she hid it good. She made a deal with me. I didn't have any choice, Jason, I was so desperate…you don't know what it's like. They were starving me in jail. I thought I was going to go crazy."
Jason put both his hands on her shoulders and stared down at her. "You made a deal with her, Lis?" A long, unpleasant pause followed. "What kind of deal?"
"She made the evidence disappear," Lisa whispered. "Just like with her. They dropped the charges against me. I was free. She wanted…she wanted to know what was in her FBI file. How we caught her. If I told her that she'd let me go. She does that…she didn't want me in jail. She likes tormenting me, but she's saved me twice. Once when Mapp shot me and then again in Argentina. If I was in jail…she wouldn't, I don't know, that doesn't make her happy. There's no fun in it. But she's still got it, somewhere. I don't know where. Somewhere, in a safe deposit box, is all the evidence that they need. If they catch her, she'll tell the authorities where it is, and then I go to jail. And they're not gonna go easy on me. I can't take that. She said so herself, we're bound together. Either we're both free or we're both in jail."
She was crying openly now, and making no attempt to hide it. Tears streamed down her face. She met his face and looked away, unable to meet his gaze.
When Jason Sullivan spoke, his voice was cool and collected. There was a distance in it that cut her to hear. She flinched from it like a frightened child.
"What did she want from you?" he asked. "What was your end of the deal?"
"Her file," Lisa sobbed. "She wanted her file. If she knew how we caught her she could avoid getting caught later."
His eyes focused on her like laser beams. She supposed it was how he looked at suspects. She cowered in misery.
"Did you give it to her?" His voice was cold and unsympathetic.
Lisa buried her head in her hands and her shoulders shook.
"Lis? Did you give it to her?"
"Yes," Lisa Starling whispered in utter defeat.
"What did you give her?" his voice pressed gently.
"Everything," Lisa said. "I gave her everything."
A chair rasped as Jason Sullivan pulled it out and sat down. He stared coolly at Lisa. For her part, Lisa looked away, feeling unclean and despicable.
"Did you know that she was the one behind all this? Creed and the Bludgeon Man and everything?"
Lisa shook her head. "No," she said brokenly. "I didn't know she had any connection to the Bludgeon Man. As far as Creed, I suspected, but I didn't know anything for sure."
"You sure?"
Lisa nodded. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I knew where she was living," she admitted dully. "I didn't tell anyone. I just…Jason, you don't know what it's like. The despair. In prison, it's…you'd only know if you were there."
"You knew." It was a simple, cold statement of fact.
Lisa nodded and wiped her nose before she burst into tears again. "I know, I'm a coward," she sobbed. "I just…they were going to put me in jail for twenty years down there. And she'd have gotten away anyway. I was…I just couldn't, Jason, I broke. I know you hate me, but I just…I broke."
His face was irretrievably cold and his tone chilly. His voice was measured.
"I don't hate you, Lisa," he said. "But I'm going to collar the Bludgeon Man. And Susana and Creed, too. And I think it would be better if you don't come along."
Lisa nodded powerlessly and sniffled.
He rose and stuffed his automatic in his holster. Lisa watched him prepare to leave. She knew this would be it. The end. She'd really liked him. Maybe loved him, she wasn't sure. But now this was it. He knew her secret and despised her for it.
"When I get back, I'll make arrangements for a hotel room," he said, his tone still measured and cold. "I think it'd be better if you moved out."
Lisa was too emotionally drained to argue. She thought she knew now how a life-sentenced defendant feels when the prison gates crash closed behind them. There was dread, yes. Remorse. The belief that life would only hold further pain. But there was also the stern, moral voice of her conscience, telling her that this was just. That this was richly deserved. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she wondered if Jason would follow through on it. She would go to prison if he did. It didn't seem to matter.
She had stopped crying, but when the door slammed she started again.