"Clarice!  Clarice!"  Will Graham stood stupefied in the middle of the street as he watched the taxicab carrying Clarice Starling disappear around the corner.  He looked around frantically.  No cabs in sight.  Wait!  There's one.  Will stepped into the path of the cab, stopping the driver, who yelled something obscene in Italian.  Will rounded the car and had barely gotten his hand on the handle of the door, when the driver noticed his scarred face, and floored the gas.

"God damn!"  Will screamed, much to the vexation of the people passing by.  He charged back to the door and confronted the doorman.  "The woman in the red dress, did you hear where she was going?"

"I… I do not know, signor.  She-she just got in.  She said nothing."

Graham sighed exasperated.  "Did you see what cab company?"

"Si, signor.  Palazzio Cabs.  The signora at the desk can give you the number, if you like," the young Italian man was becoming more unsure of what Will wanted by the minute.

Will charged into the hotel lobby, ignoring the glares from the relaxing tourists.  He approached the woman at the desk who visibly cringed as he drew near.

"Mr. Graham?" she questioned.

Will stopped short with his mouth wide open, ready to start yelling.  "Yes," he said.  "That's me."

"There's a phone call for you."

"Let me take it here."

The receptionist pulled a phone from behind the counter and placed it before Will, who picked up the receiver anxiously.  "Clarice?"

"Will, what the hell is going on over there?!"  Jack Crawford's angry voice blasted into Will's ear and he pulled the phone away quickly.

"Sorry about leaving you hanging Jack, but I could have sworn I just saw Clarice leave the hotel in an evening gown!"

"What?  Wh-? Why aren't you following her?!"

"No time to explain," Will said, catching the receptionist's eye.  He put his hand over the mouthpiece.  "Get the Palazzio Cab Company on the phone.  Find out which drivers made pickups at the hotel in the last ten minutes.  Find out where their passengers were dropped off."

"He's there, isn't he?" Crawford's voice sounded distant, dazed.

"I think that's a pretty safe assumption," Will sounded perturbed at Crawford's failure to show concern for the danger Clarice was fast putting herself into if their guess was right.

The receptionist was fast at work calling the cab company.  Covering the mouthpiece again, Graham said, "Here, give me the room key for 467, and call me in that room when you find out anything."

"Si, signor," she said handing him the spare card.

"Jack, look I'll call you back from the cell phone when I get back upstairs.  Maybe she left something that will tell us where she went."

"Alright."

They hung up at the same moment.  Will spun from the counter and went for the elevator.  He jabbed the button hard and it lit up, but he watched as the numbers above the door climbed higher and higher with no sign of coming down.  He hit the wall with his fist, before turning and heading for the door marked 'stairs'.

Four flights and way out of breath later, Will threw open the door to the fourth floor hallway where the rooms were.  He fumbled to put the key card into the door.  The light flashed first red, then green, and he twisted the handle open frantically. 

Flipping on the lights, Will could see fog on the bathroom mirror still.  On the floor were the clothes Clarice had been in when he found her at Lecter's old rooms.  Will's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his cellular phone ringing incessantly in the next room.  He flew into the next room to pick it up.

"Graham," he reported.

"It's Jack.  Did you find anything?"

"I was just going into her room when you called," Will said, going back around to Clarice's room.  There he began switching on all the lights in the room.  As he passed the bureau, he felt and heard something crunch beneath his feet.  He leaned to switch on the light on the dresser, brushing past what felt to be flowers, and then looked down.  "Oh my God."

"What?  Will, what?"

Will's mouth hung open as he stared at the mauve colored paper spread on the floor.  "Jesus, Jack, she's got letters from him."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."  Will stared at the distinctive copperplate. There was no mistake; Will had received such letters from Lecter himself.  "I thought I had seen her pull one from a painting in his rooms, but I couldn't be sure.  I thought I was seeing things."

"What does it say?"

            Will's eyes skimmed the finely crafted script.  "He wrote it before Muskrat Farm.  He says he has something planned for her.  Something about pleasing her father."

            "Her father died when she was young."

            "Yeah, apparently Lecter latched on to that and is berating her about wasting her life trying to please him."

            "You said there were letters, is there another one?  One with something about where to meet him?"

            Will reached for the other letter, barely able to take his eyes off the first.  "Something about not accepting an invitation, he asks if she and I had come to an 'agreement.'"  Crawford gripped the arms of his chair impatiently.  "Wait," Will said at last.  "Here's something: 'I trust you know the place and dress code.'"

            "Alright, so it was a predetermined place," Crawford searched his memories for anything from the dungeon conversations.  "No," he said finally.  "They never talked about Florence, in any of the tapes."

            "I know, I know, but somehow she had to know where to go."  Will then saw the drawing.  "Wait a tick."  His eyes trailed over it, once again a perfect image of Clarice Starling, sitting on the ledge of some ancient building gazing over at spiraling towers.  "You visited Lecter in Baltimore, right Jack?  Do you remember the drawings on his wall?"

            Crawford shook his head.  "A little, they were lost after the transfer to Memphis."

            "The one of the towers, the spires.  Do you remember it?"

            "Yes, vaguely.  It may have been in Florence."  Crawford paged through his own reports about Lecter.  He, by mere chance, flipped to the first report that Clarice had filed on her visit with Dr. Lecter.  He remembered his words to Clarice all those years ago.  If he's drawing, what is he drawing.  Crawford thanked God for his foresight.  "Here, Will, he had a picture of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo in his cell in Baltimore."

            Will looked at the picture.  Could be either one of those, but she's sitting somewhere looking at them.  "Any chance it says what vantage point it was drawn from?"

            "She wrote, 'as seen from the Belvedere.'" 

Just then the phone began ringing in the room.  "I'll have to call you back, Jack."  Will hung up without waiting for a reply.

He answered the ringing phone briskly.  "Hello?"

"Signor Graham? This is the front desk.  You wanted to know about the cabs?"

"Yeah," Will said, pulling out a notepad.

"There were four pickups in the last half hour.  Two went downtown to shopping, a third to an exclusive nightclub, and one went to the Belvedere, but it is closed, Signor."

Dread grew heavy in Graham.  "Would you call me a cab, please?"

"Si, signor.  It should be here when you come down."

"Thanks," Will numbly hung up the phone.  He had to get downstairs.  He only had one chance to get this right.