Author's note: After having closed out the Susana series to avoid it becoming The Series That Would Not Die, I found myself wondering about other options for the GD to have a daughter. (Plus it was incredibly fun to have a female sociopath running around creating mayhem. Don't look at me like that; I like female sociopaths. Well, as characters anyway.) Susana was a next-generation book character, who isn't even born yet in our timeline (she was born in 2004 in that series). This daughter of Lecter is born earlier; she's part of the here and now. Also, for what it's worth, this is movie-canon, and Susana was book canon. (Yes, I'm splitting hairs.)
So here we are with this. Alice isn't a Susana clone; you'll see. I also know that Dr. Lecter's downfall in the movie was not quite as it was presented here, but it was necessary to bend a few tiny details for the sake of the story.
April 1980
Dr. Hannibal Lecter entered his fine house in the best section of Baltimore and sighed. Things were not going terribly well for him. Much of his life was going along just swimmingly. He had a thriving psychiatric practice. He consulted to the FBI occasionally, and was doing so now on the Chesapeake Ripper killings. The fact that he was the Chesapeake Ripper himself was a fact he chose to keep hidden from Agent Will Graham. Tomorrow was his dinner party for the Baltimore Philharmonic. The flautist he had captured was still alive, down in his basement. Dr. Lecter didn't plan to kill him yet; the meat he planned to serve was best served fresh. He would slit the man's throat in the early afternoon tomorrow. That way he'd be done cooking by the time guests arrived.
No, what Dr. Lecter had were girlfriend problems. He had been dating a socialite for the past several months. At the time, she'd seemed pleasant and cultured. She was fun to be with. But she had a darker side, Dr. Lecter had discovered. When angered, she could be unbelievably petty and vindictive. He'd discovered she was also a charming and accomplished liar. She was the only person Dr. Lecter knew who was as skilled at manipulation as he was. In short, she was a wealthy, cunning female sociopath.
Sociopaths often have problems forming and maintaining relationships. His relationship with Jane Pierpont had become problematic. He'd tried to break it off gently, but she was having none of it. The night before, he had dropped by her place in an attempt to let her down gently. Without quite realizing it, he had ended up in bed with her. That annoyed him; it made it harder to do what needed to be done.
His telephone rang. Dr. Lecter was quite happy he had invested in a telephone answering machine. It saved him the trouble of having to deal with her. He heard his own cultured voice thanking the caller for calling, and then a beep. His girlfriend's angry voice spoke.
"Hannibal! I know you're there. You are not dumping me, Hannibal. I warn you. You get on this phone right now or you will regret it for the rest of your life. Do you hear me?"
Dr. Lecter picked up his Harpy and headed down to his basement, ignoring the voice.
On the other end of the line, Jane Pierpont shook with fury. She slammed the phone down. How…how dare he ignore her like this? Tell her it was over? She would show him. No one did that to her and got away with it.
She looked at the mirror and observed her own flushed face. Break up with her, eh? She'd show him. She would make him very very sorry.
Hannibal Lecter thought he was smart. He was bright, she'd give him that. But he wasn't infallible. Once, before, when things had been good between the two of them, she had woken up in his bed and wanted some wine. She'd gone down to his wine cellar, meaning to get something for a nightcap. The wine cellar was on the right side of the stairs as you went down. On the left…
She'd been shocked and amazed at what she saw, but she hadn't said anything. At the time she didn't care; she loved him and if he killed off a few annoying people, so be it. The good of society mattered not a whit to Jane Pierpont. But now…now it was useful.
Jane knew better than to call from her own home. They said you couldn't trace a call in less than twenty seconds, but she wasn't sure. Better to make sure. She grabbed her car keys and headed down the steps of her own mansion and got behind the wheel of her own car.
The Baltimore airport was exactly what she needed – people coming in and out all the time, and banks of pay phones available for the use of anyone at all. She walked up to one and dropped in her money. She dialed the number she'd found penciled in his Rolodex.
"FBI," a voice said.
"Hello," Jane said. "I need to speak to Agent Graham."
"He's not in the office," the receptionist said. "He's on vacation with his family."
Jane frowned. "Can you take a message for him?" she asked spritely. Her voice indicated none of her anger.
"Of course, ma'am," the receptionist said. "Can I get your name, please?"
"No," she said. "This is an anonymous tip. Have Graham look in Dr. Lecter's basement. That's Lecter, Hannibal Lecter. He's consulting on a forensic case with him or something." She thought to herself and smiled bitterly. "If he can't get into Dr. Lecter's basement, then tell him to look in the big black book in his office."
"I'll tell him."
"Thank you so much," Jane said, and hung up.
From there, things went more or less as she had hoped. The receptionist passed the message on to Will Graham when he got back into town. He was busy and it barely registered. He had an idea on what the Chesapeake Ripper was doing, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to talk to Dr. Lecter.
But later, when Dr. Lecter was getting his coat, his eyes wandered over the book on Dr. Lecter's shelf.
If you can't get into the basement, look in the big black book in his office. Will Graham didn't exactly remember the source of the tip. Later he would describe it as a tickle. But he heard that mental voice and he did what it said.
Jane Pierpont caught it on the news. She smiled with angry victory to hear that the Chesapeake Ripper had been unmasked. That would show Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He would spend his life in jail, she thought, and was not in the least bothered that he was confined in a criminal insane asylum instead of prison. He would be there for life. She wondered sometimes if he thought of her, and how trying to break it off with her had changed his life forever.
It wasn't until three weeks later that she found out how Dr. Hannibal Lecter had changed her life forever. She'd been feeling nauseated and went to her doctor. Her doctor provided her some unexpected news.
"You're pregnant, ma'am."
January 2002
The club was smoky and closing time was near. The lights were turned down low, so that the customers wouldn't notice the carpet had not been acquainted with a steam cleaner in some time. It also made the dancers look better. As the night had gone on, each dancer had gone out for her set, dancing three songs. Now, small purses were full of one-dollar bills that had been stuffed into G-strings and garters by sweaty, trembling hands. The last few dancers were getting ready to finish; those done with their shifts were changing out of their dainty, sexy costumes into more comfortable jeans and sneakers.
Jeannette Baker glanced at herself in the mirror and sighed, brushing her long, straw-blond hair out of her eyes. Finally, she could go home. She'd almost made enough to pay off her plastic surgeon. Getting the implants had definitely improved her tips. She was bringing home a couple hundred a night. After that, it was all pure profit, baby. She wanted to be the main attraction at the strip club she worked at, and she was getting there. She was a tall blonde, and that helped. She also had implants now, and that helped too.
There was a new girl working tonight. Jeannette wasn't too sure about her. Of course, most new girls in a strip club had to go through a vetting process more demanding than most sororities to be accepted by their fellow dancers, but there was something about her that freaked Jeannette and the others out. It wasn't that she was ugly; far from it. She had dark hair and very pale skin. Almost like a vampire, Jeannette thought. But there was something weird in how she acted: cocky, as if this all was a tremendous joke. She'd done pretty well for her first time out. Most girls got hinky the first time they stripped in front of an audience.
But Jeannette wouldn't have to deal with her again until tomorrow. For now, she wanted to go home, cook up some breakfast, and get some sleep. She didn't have to be here until ten tomorrow night.
So she packed up her bag containing her costumes, said goodbye to the bouncer and the other dancers, and headed out to her battered Chevy. Snow was falling and she frowned. A blast of cold wind hit her in the face. The back parking lot was a morass of dirty brown snow. Her car did lousy in the snow.
The new girl was walking around a trim, neat little Honda on the other side of the lot with a frown on her face. She turned and looked calmly at Jeannette. She walked up to her and raised a hand.
"Hey," she hailed. "Um…my battery is dead. Could I get a jump start from you?"
Up close, she seemed much calmer and less…weird. Jeannette shrugged.
"I don't have jumper cables," she demurred. "You can ask Tony, he might be able to help you."
"I do," the other girl said. Jeannette pondered on what her name was. Her stage name was Alicia, but that didn't mean jack. Jeannette danced under the name Victoria.
"I don't know how to jump-start a car," Jeannette said.
The other girl slumped as if frustrated. "I do," she repeated. "My dad taught me. It's easy. I just want to use your battery for a couple of minutes."
Jeanette sighed, but leaving the other girl stranded in the freezing winter was just mean. And it was hard to demur without looking bitchy. She nodded.
"Okay, fine," she said. It took just a moment to pull the car over to the other girl's stranded Honda. She popped the hood and waited. The other girl needed a jump, she could figure it out herself. Or she could ask Tony; he'd offer her another sort of jump if he hadn't already.
The other girl busied herself with something, lifting the hoods of both cars and struggling with a set of long cables. She walked around to the driver's side of the Chevy and made a chopping motion with one hand. Jeannette sighed and cranked down her window.
"Yes?" she said icily. It had just started to get warm in the damn car.
"Kill the motor," the other girl said. Her tone was surprisingly commanding. Jeannette raised an eyebrow. No new girl talked to her like that, not at this club.
But she turned off the ignition. The other girl put her hand on the open windowsill. She'd removed her mitten and Jeannette glanced down at the hand. It looked weird. A few moments later, she realized why. The girl had six fingers on her left hand. Two middle fingers, it looked like. Jeannette Baker did not know this was the rarest form of polydactyly and did not care to know.
Freak show, Jeannette said, staring unpleasantly at the hand on her windowsill. Her lip curled up in distaste.
The girl looked a bit embarrassed. "Looking at my hand?" she asked.
Jeannette sighed. "That's…well, yeah, that's really freaky."
"I was born that way," the other girl explained. "People stare. All the time."
"Well," Jeannette said, "just start your car. It's freezing."
The girl seemed not to hear. "The weird thing is," she said thoughtfully, "they should concern themselves with the other hand."
She leaned in the window then, her right hand moving fast. The sap in it smacked Jeannette in the temple. The blonde slumped forward, her eyes dimming.
Alice Pierpont grinned cruelly and opened the door. Of course the dumb girl hadn't locked the door. She shoved Jeannette's limp body aside and got behind the wheel, calmly dropping the car into reverse and backing up to park. It took only a few minutes to shut the hood of her perfectly functional Honda and her victim's Chevy. Then she pulled on a hat. None of the other dancers were out yet. Good. At this range they wouldn't be able to tell her from little Jeannette, not with the hat on to conceal her own dark hair.
She dropped the car into drive and pulled away. The bar was in a rather seedy part of town; empty factories were all around. She pulled up by one and scurried out of the car. It was two in the morning and there was little traffic. From her jeans pocket she pulled out a keyring and consulted it carefully. The correct key was marked with a piece of tape. She put it in the garage door of the abandoned factory and turned it. The door rattled up obediently.
Back in the car to pull it in. She'd dump it back at the bar once she was done. Someone might notice its absence, but the cops would simply write it off to dippy strippers not knowing their ass from their elbow. Awfully convenient.
Jeannette had begun to stir. She looked up and held up a hand defensively at her tormentor. Alice leaned back into the car and gave her another whack. In the dim, guttering light coming in the windows, her eyes reflected redly at her victim.
Alice had managed to scarf a key to the place by pretending to be working for a realtor interested in showing the place. Like anyone wanted a nasty old factory in the middle of inner-city Baltimore. She had use for it, though, but her use would make it harder to sell the place. Ah well, she wanted a place to work.
An observer would have been surprised, watching how easily Alice hauled her victim out of the car. Jeannette outweighed her and stood a half-head taller, but Alice hauled her out easily with one arm and slung her over her shoulder as easily as if she had been a rag doll.
On the cracked concrete floor of the factory was a loop of rope. Alice dropped her captive on a table she had set up. A smaller table nearby held her working tools. Thick ropes run under the table served to provide her ample opportunity to tie down her victim. Once Jeannette was secure, Alice took a small glass bottle from the smaller table. Uncapping this provided a stink of ammonia, and Alice frowned. She waved it under the nose of her victim.
Jeannette coughed and tossed her head. She stared up at the pale face staring down at her. A small, wry grin crossed Alice's face.
"Good morning, merry sunshine," she said. Her tone held a hint of amusement.
"What…what's happening?" Jeannette asked.
"Ah. What is happening. Questions, always questions." Alice's voice turned mocking. "'What's happening to me? Why are you doing this to me?' 'What are you going to do with that spiked club'?" She shook her head. "We're going to have us a little chat," she said brightly.
Jeannette stared at her tormentor and trembled.
"For one thing," Alice said, "we're going to talk about feminism. Do you realize what you're doing stripping for men? You help to objectify all of us women." She made a moue of distaste and shook her head again. "You are betraying the sisterhood by letting men stuff dollar bills in your G-string. You are damaging the female aura by selling yourself so cheap. Your bountiful female energy is being bottled and sold to men for far too cheap a price, thus committing gender treason. And you're…oh, hell," she grinned. "Okay, I admit it. I'm not really up on the latest feminist-theory hoohah. But I don't care for stripping. It does cheapen women in the eyes of men. You do it and so they think we're all like that."
"No," Jeannette said. "Please, it's just a job. I just want the money. I'm not a hooker."
"You're only one step up," Alice allowed. "C'mon. Tell me, whatever possessed you to wake up one morning and say, 'I feel like having two big bags of saline shoved in my breasts'? What's wrong with the way they were?"
She grabbed the denim shirt that Jeannette wore and ripped it open. The dancer's enhanced breasts rose and fell as her breathing turned panicked. She wore a lacy black bra. Alice snorted at the other woman's fear.
"Are you afraid to show those off?" she asked incredulously. "Did I not just see you running around doing exactly that for a bunch of strangers?"
"You did too," Jeannette said insanely, staring up in walleyed fear.
Alice smiled coldly. "Only to pick a victim," she pointed out. Then her expression turned sardonic again.
"Man, I don't know how you walk around with those," she chirped. "Your back must kill you at the end of the night, between the stiletto heels and those." Alice produced a knife and slit the bra between the cups. She cut through the shoulder straps and yanked the ruined garment out from under her prisoner.
"Those don't even match your size. Here you are, going for hyper boobs," Alice said, and prodded one with the knife. Jeannette screamed piercingly. "They don't look real, though. They don't even move." She prodded it again with her finger as if to indicate its lack of motion. How much did those cost you?"
Jeanette trembled and said nothing.
"I asked you a question," Alice said delicately, and prodded her again with the knife.
"Three grand," Jeanette said, and began to cry.
"Three grand. And how many pairs of stiletto heels do you buy? How many costumes? Do you realize how much you're spending? And on what? Shoes that kill your feet and big bags of saline to shove in your body." She made a tch-tch-tch sound with her tongue.
"Please," Jeannette sobbed. Tears tracked her face. Alice stared down at her as if she was an interesting specimen pinned and ready for mounting. "Please, don't kill me, I just dance for a living. It's just for money. I'll quit if that's what you want."
Alice shook her head. "It isn't," she said disdainfully.
"Then what do you want?" Jeannette asked, staring up at her captor.
Alice pondered.
"My face on the twenty-dollar bill," she said, remaining perfectly deadpan.
Jeannette's eyes began to tear up and widen as she realized that the other girl would not be placated. Alice chuckled. She walked over to where a CD player sat on the table nearby. She punched a button on it and a lone acoustic guitar began to play. Alice's preferred music was that played by chicks with acoustic guitars. She had no use for classical; it was pretentious.
A female voice began to sing. Calmly, Alice sang along with it for a few bars. Her voice was a clear, pleasant alto. It sounded surprisingly normal in the still air of the factory.
Halfway through the song, Alice jumped up onto the table. She dropped two things down on the table on either side of the bound girl. Jeannette glanced down to see what they were, but could not make them out. Like a snake's prey, her eyes floated helplessly back to those of her captor's. Alice sat down chummily on her victim's stomach. She glanced down at Jeannette's large breasts enough to make the other girl uncomfortable. Although as heterosexual as her victim, Alice did it because she was amused at her victim's reaction.
She opened her mouth and began to sing the next verse of the song. She liked this song a great deal. And here, the most appropriate verse to what she planned to do.
"And I am watching your chest rise and fall,
Like the tides of my life, and the rest of it all,"
In each hand, she grasped a Magnum Tanto knife, made by Cold Steel. The knife was a mean knife for a mean world; seven and a half inches of Cold Steel's San Mai III custom-made steel, curving gently to a wickedly sharp tanto point. These knives were made specifically for fighting, and good knives they were for that. These knives and her hands were old lovers; she had practiced with them for hours each day.
"And your bones have been my bedframe
And your flesh has been my pillow," she continued, lolling comfortably on her victim's abdomen.
Alice raised her hands high overhead. The twin blades glittered, one in each hand. Her eyes gleamed.
"I've been waiting for sleep
To offer up the deep
With both hands," she finished.
Both hands came down firmly. There was a meaty stabbing sound and then a surprising liquid pop that she felt rather than heard. She drove the knives more firmly down. Sleep offered up the deep for Jeannette Baker, and did not let her go. Alice slid off her victim and tilted her head, watching. The blood seemed quite thin, but then it was mixed with saline, wasn't it?
It had gone much easier and much more quietly than she expected. But it was a start. Eventually, enough murders would draw the attention of the FBI. And that was just fine with Alice Pierpont.
The battered Honda she'd purchased for cash started right up when she made her way back to the car. Jeannette's Chevy could rot for all she cared; they'd find it when they found her body. That probably wouldn't be for a few weeks.
She observed her own maroon eyes in the mirror for a moment and grinned. This was going to be fun.