The antiseptic smell of the hospital bothered Josh's nostrils, but he was still glad to be here. The plastic chair in the hospital was not comfortable. His back hurt. He'd been here for hours. A change of clothes would be most welcome at this point; he'd been wearing the same clothes for two days. But still, he was happy to be here.
Will Graham lay in the bed, looking up at his son calmly. Bandages marked where Dr. Lecter had gutted him. Twice now Dr. Lecter had tried to kill him, and twice skilled surgeons had put together what the psychiatrist had set asunder. He was badly wounded, but he would live.
The door opened with a quiet snick and a creak of hinges. Josh turned. His face brightened to see Clarice Starling standing in the doorway. Her face still looked gaunt and somewhat haggard, but a night in the hospital and Ardelia Mapp's jerk chicken had done a great deal to restore her spirits. She smiled calmly at him and then over at Will.
"Hey, partner," she said softly.
Josh grinned and glanced down nervously. "How're you doing?" he asked.
Clarice shrugged. "I'm all right," she said. "A lot better after a few good meals. How's your dad?"
Will sat up and observed Clarice with his wintry blue eyes. "Don't talk about me like I'm dead, you young whippersnappers," he quipped. The plastic mattress crackled as he tried to sit up. Josh scowled at his father.
"Dad," he admonished. "Your bed raises and lowers itself. You don't need to do it."
Will observed his son with a grin. "God forbid I do anything myself," he said. Then he glanced over at Clarice.
"Anything from the office to tell us about?" he asked.
Clarice nodded. Her face seemed a bit pinched. "They've been searching her house," she said. "We found the torture chamber in the basement, pictures of Dr. Lecter, her weapons, and all that easy. They're going through the journals now. Some of it's pretty sad. I don't know if she's legally insane or not, but she was definitely pretty ill. Some of it is perfectly normal. Some of it is positively deranged. And some of it…well, it's sad. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her."
Josh thought of all the horrible things Alice had done. She'd held both of them captive. She'd tortured and killed without much compunction. She'd kept Clarice caged in her basement, for God's sake. Yet still, he could see it. Somehow, on some level, she'd wanted them to like her. Keeping them captive had somehow made her more human.
"What are they going to do to her?" he asked.
Clarice shrugged. "She's in jail right now," she said. "The judge will almost assuredly order psychological tests, so they may send her to a psychiatric hospital for that. After that, it's up to the attorneys. The state will argue that she was sane; her defense attorneys will argue that she wasn't." Her voice dropped a bit. "I'm just glad everyone's all right."
Will smiled at her. "All right," he grumbled good-naturedly. "I damn near got gutted and you think I'm all right."
Clarice smiled softly. "You're going to be all right," she said. "Gonna live to fight another day, Will."
Will snorted playfully. "Fight, yeah, right. I'm going back to my boat-motor shop. There the worst thing that can happen to me is that I cut my hand with a screwdriver or something." His eyes fell on Josh. "Maybe you want to come with me," he said.
Josh thought. After this entire ordeal – being held as Alice's captive boy-toy, having to watch Clarice in a cage – the idea was tempting. Even so, this was what he had become an FBI agent to do.
He shook his head. "Maybe later," he said calmly. "But there are still killers to catch, Dad. This is something I have to do."
Will Graham nodded and smiled. "I know," he said. "I'm proud of you, Josh."
Josh smiled but found himself feeling somehow unworthy. He hadn't really been a hero. He'd been kidnapped rather easily. He hadn't saved the girl. He hadn't even gotten the bad guy; Dr. Lecter had vanished into thin air. They'd been checking hotels in the area and found nothing. They'd thought he might try to free his daughter. Instead, there had been nothing.
Even so, they would find him eventually. For now, everyone was alive, and that was enough.
…
The jail was noisy, Dr. Lecter thought. His papers were excellently forged and served perfectly well to get him where he needed to be. He knew this was a risk, but he simply had to take this chance. Just as he had been unable to abandon Clarice when she needed him, he could not simply leave his daughter.
He could not free her, though. Her acts had made the Tattler's front page. Of course, they were unable to resist the temptation of Hannibal Lecter's unknown daughter committing crimes akin to his own. The decent media had been less hysterical but no less copious in their coverage. No, his daughter would need to wait a bit.
Besides, he was not at his physical peak. Two of Josh Graham's bullets had struck him, and he had been obliged to remove them himself. His right arm was essentially non-functional. Only painkillers and his own iron will enabled him to go without a sling. Yet he would not abandon his daughter to the harshness of the legal system. So he presented his paperwork to the guard on duty.
"Good morning," he said courteously. "My name is Dr. Henry Martin. I've been assigned by the court to evaluate Alice Pierpont for competency. May I see her, please?"
The guard looked up at him, examined the papers Dr. Lecter had forged himself from the appropriate forms on the Maryland State Bar Association's website, and glanced down. He saw the fine suit and tie and ignored the man inside it.
"Okay, doc," he said. "Have a seat. We'll bring her into the interview room."
It took perhaps fifteen minutes. Dr. Lecter sat down and closed his eyes. He found himself wondering about her. They were tied by blood and that was all. He had never seen her take her first steps or say her first word. Jane had withheld knowledge of her existence from him. When he'd escaped from custody, she would have been seven or eight. When he'd returned to the United States from Florence, she would have been fourteen or fifteen.
This would take time. According to the Tattler, she had been mute since her arrest. That was good. Dr. Lecter would also urge her to stay off her medications; it would make an insanity verdict easier to obtain. In the end, once things had calmed down, it would be immeasurably easier to get her out of an insane asylum than a maximum-security prison. Dr. Lecter had kept up on psychiatry and psychiatric practice. Much had changed since he had been incarcerated. The restraints that had been a part of his daily life for eight years in the asylum were a thing of the past now. Patients were given more freedoms. That was a comfort to the doctor; if he were ever re-apprehended, escape from a psychiatric hospital now would be a simple matter indeed.
The guard called him over to the interview room. It was a small, bare room with a table and two chairs. Blank concrete walls confined him. There was only one door into the room. Dr. Lecter noticed that the chairs were bolted to the floor, and that Alice's chair had its back against the wall. That was good; at least it was in line with proper psychiatric practice.
Two guards appeared at the door, Alice Pierpont standing in between them with her hands cuffed behind her back. She wore an orange jail jumpsuit and cloth step-in sneakers. Her face was blank and her hair dirty. Whether or not this was because Alice did not have access to shampoo or because she was depressed Dr. Lecter did not know. Her eyes looked dead. When she saw him, she saw immediately through the dyed hair and contact lenses. Her eyes widened and seemed to come to life, but she did not speak.
"Thank you for bringing her," Dr. Lecter said to the guards. "I'll need an hour, in privacy. Please remove the handcuffs."
One of the guards looked at him askance. "She's violent, doc."
"I presume you'll be right outside, no?" Dr. Lecter said.
The guard shrugged and nodded.
"It'll be all right. Please wait outside; if she becomes violent we'll handle it then. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, hmmm?"
"Okay," the guard said. His tone indicated he thought the psychiatrist was crazy. He did not know he was hardly alone in that opinion; after all, the Baltimore County Court had agreed. But he removed the shackles from Alice's wrists. He pointed at the empty chair.
"Siddown," he told Alice. "Don't try anything. Just siddown and mind your manners."
Alice looked at him like a frightened child and sat down, hunching over. She seemed quite small in the chair. The door slammed shut with a bang. Father and daughter looked at it, then at each other.
"Hello, Alice," Dr. Lecter said calmly.
She stared at him and said nothing.
"I've come here to help you," he said politely, and smiled. "You may talk to me," he continued. "The guards are not listening. What you tell me is confidential."
She wet her lips and stared at him. Was she in worse shape than he thought? Then her lips parted and she spoke.
"You came back for me," she said.
Dr. Lecter let out a sigh. "I came here to help you," he said. "I cannot free you. Not now. This jail is too secure, and I'm not in shape to physically overpower anyone." He indicated his arm. "I'm afraid your boyfriend caused me some damage. Nothing that won't heal…but I can't do it now."
She considered that and nodded silently.
"Has anyone been in to visit you?"
She shook her head. "Mother is angry that I've shamed the family," she said aimlessly. "But I think she's happy. She wants me here."
Dr. Lecter nodded. "Jane is hateful," he said. "That is how she is. Ultimately she is not terribly different from you. The difference is that you don't seem to have the same hate she does."
"She's angry about Eddie," Alice said.
Dr. Lecter smiled. "Your work?"
Alice nodded.
"That's my girl. Tell me, do you think he'll get off?"
She shrugged. "I did everything I could," she said. "The evidence is there. Up to a jury, I guess. Same as in my case. Am I going to go to jail for the rest of my life?"
Dr. Lecter paused. "They may sentence you to that," he agreed. "I hope they don't. Even so, I shall not forsake you. I did not know you existed; by the time you were born I was already incarcerated."
She nodded and stared off into space. "I miss Josh," she said sadly.
You've also been missing your medications, Dr. Lecter thought. "I can sympathize," he said, and his calm veneer seemed to crack a bit. "It is painful to want someone whom you can never have. But Alice, you have larger problems right now."
He leaned forward and put his hand on his daughter's. This was the best he could do for her, right now. Perhaps she would learn from his mistakes.
"Have you spoken since your arrest?" he asked.
She shook her head. "You're the first," she said.
He nodded. "Good," he said, and grinned. "Listen to me. Do not speak to anyone else. Period. Do they allow you to have pens?"
"Soft-tip markers," she said.
He nodded. That had not changed. All the better.
"Take the pens. Draw eyes on the walls of your cell. As stylized as possible," Dr. Lecter said. "If anyone asks what they are for, tell them the eyes protect you. If anyone asks you open-ended questions, describe the oddest thing you can and become progressively more bizarre. I'll give you some more examples." He shuffled papers from his folder and handed them to her. "Study these, and commit them to memory."
"What is this for?" Alice asked, seeming interested.
"This is the way in which I used to counsel perfectly sane killers into appearing mentally ill," Dr. Lecter said jauntily. "The idea is to appear insane, so that they will send you to a mental institution. After that, they would simply do five years in a mental institution instead of life in prison. Once enough time had passed, they were free to do their deeds again."
"Five years?" Alice said disbelievingly.
"I'm afraid you'll have to spend some time in detention," Dr. Lecter said. "I don't know if it will be five years or not. Listen to me, and you will be free. Your first objective is to be found insane, so that you are sent to an asylum rather than a prison. Once you are there, your second objective is to appear innocent and non-violent. That is where I made my mistake, Alice. I attacked a nurse."
"You ate her tongue," Alice observed.
"I did, yes. It was a mistake. Not that I regret doing it; she was rude. It was a mistake because I could have obtained my freedom much earlier if I had not done so. Learn from that mistake, Alice. Be quiet, pleasant, obedient, and non-violent, no matter what. Eventually, they will come to believe you are harmless, and they'll move you to somewhere less secure. Once that happens, freedom will be much easier to obtain."
Alice nodded and set to studying the papers he had given her.
"You may find that you are able to free yourself by your own hand," Dr. Lecter explained. "I shall also make arrangements as I can, once I know where you are being held. These things do take time; expect to spend at least a year in confinement. You must learn the lay of the land. Don't try to escape foolishly or rashly. You must plan it out if you are to succeed." He quoted an address in Argentina. "Can you remember that?"
"I can remember everything," Alice said. Her tone sounded more calm and in control. "Are you…are you really going to help me?"
Dr. Lecter smiled. "Leaving you behind to suffer imprisonment would not be…the polite thing to do. You are my daughter," he said simply. "That is where I live currently. I shall also give you an address in Baltimore to write to. They will forward it to me." He gave her that address as well.
"So what happens now?" she asked, her eyes intent on his. The same color, he noted. That was comforting, in a way. His genes would go on. He would not be entirely alone.
"Pay attention to this, and memorize it," Dr. Lecter explained. "A skilled psychiatrist can detect an untrained malingerer. A malingerer trained by a psychiatrist can pass any test. With luck, they'll find you incompetent to stand trial." He rose from his chair. "If they do that, you'll be packed off to an asylum to see if they can restore you to competency. You'd spend at least a year, perhaps two. You have excellent attorneys; it will be their job to keep you there and out of a courtroom. Either you escape on your own or I will find some way to free you yet."
For the rest of the time there, he explained what he wanted her to do. He told her to hide her money and where to hide it. She would maintain a small amount of her fortune available for victims to make claims against, as well as a small trust fund that she could use to buy what limited things she would be allowed in prison. She was to maintain her crazed persona at all times while incarcerated, but she was not to be violent. But eventually the clock ticked down on their hour and that was all.
Calmly, Dr. Hannibal Lecter put his hand on his daughter's shoulder. Her eyes touched his: distrusting but wanting to trust, hard but wanting some softness. He decided to show some compassion. "You will need to be strong," he said, and a tone resembling paternal concern entered his voice. "But this will not end here."
The door closed behind him, and Alice Pierpont waited for the guards to enter to bring her back to her cell. Mutely she allowed them to handcuff her and bring her back to her cell. She said not a word as they brought her back to the high-security cell that she was quartered in. When that door slammed shut behind her, she walked to her desk and removed a felt-tip marker from atop the desk.
My father told me to do this, she thought, and smiled. I'll be following in his footsteps. Except I'll be avoiding his mistakes. He's going to help me.
She uncapped the marker and set about drawing eyes on the walls. Boy, this was going to creep her out at night. How was she supposed to sleep with all these eyes looking in at her? But he was right.
My father is here for me, she thought. Even in the tiny, lonely, cell, that made her smile.