We all know I don't own them. Thomas Harris does.
Thanks to the kind reviewers of Chapter VII, Drandmrslecter, Ducki, Marcus Aurelius, Steel, Guber, Hanniballover1181, Cristina, RivanKnight, Shifter, and everyone else whose kind comments prompted me to continue
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Exchanges VIII
ClariceShe drank her coffee fast and stepped on to the parking lot.
Now there was another car parked almost alongside her own. Even at a distance she could see the car had tinted windows. The drivers side window was open, and she could see the driver sitting behind the wheel.
Starling walked towards the car she had been driving, which she was supposed to leave in the lot and switch to another that the instructions said would be in the rear parking lot of the Inn.
John Brigham's voice echoed in her head "If you have to shoot, you can shoot." he had told her long ago.
"If I have to kill," she said to herself, with a lazy grin "I can kill."
Clarice walked slowly, trying to organize her thought. Suddenly she sneezed and stopped briefly, fumbling inside her bag, balancing it on her knee while she shuffled inside with both hands, as women do when searching inside a big handbag.
Eventually she pulled out a tissue and a little elongated box, possibly a nose spray of sorts, which she handled carefully in her right hand, holding it away from her body as one would a leaky container.
She continued to walk towards the car, the bag now hanging from her shoulder, a tissue in her left hand the little box in the right.
As she came closer to the cars, it was clear that the person behind the wheel was Erik Pickford .
Starling took a deep breath. "Here we go…." She said to herself.
He smiled at her, making no attempt to get off the car.
"Hello Clarice. Nice disguise." He was smiling his phony, crocodile smile "if I wouldn't have been following you I wouldn't have recognized you".
She smiled back, trying to appear unshaken, "this pencil pusher should be no challenge, really…" she though. Her mind was racing, but she was calm.
"Hi Erik," she smiled widely, "so, you figured out my scheme ah"? she wiped her nose with the tissue, "allergies," she muttered.
"Well, I figured you were going to attempt to prove yourself by catching him, cover yourself with unprecedented glory and get reinstated. God!," her chortled, "possibly even promoted"
He winked maliciously. In return, she smiled a wicked smile and turned her head to the side, not unlike she had seen Dr. Lecter do in occasion. The thought amused her and her smile widened.
She leaned her left elbow on the door of the car
"Hey, smart thinking!" Her smile now wide and open, very friendly "…If I don't lose the nerve, I'm going to catch him soon too."
"Well, that's great," he said belligerently, "and now, you are going to have a partner. We'll just share the glory, you and I." there was a gleam in his eyes, ice cold and menacing.
She wanted to sound dumb, she wanted to get as much information from him as she could in as little time as possible.
"You and I?" she actually sounded very credible, even a little flirty, "We'll bring him in together, just you and I?"
"Yeah!" he said, his smile now almost real.
"This guy is a pip." she thought, "his name should be Erik Knight".
"Why? You are not going to call for backup, once we locate him?…Are we going absolutely alone on this one?" She was hopeful.
"Well, of course, dummy," he sounded full of himself now, really impressed with his own cunning "what would be the point of calling it in? We'd miss all the glory." Proud of his shrewdness, he added, " Just you and I baby, after all, the guy is rather over the hill by now. We can do this alone the two of us."
"Heck! you were going to take him on your own"
"I guess you are right, I was just beginning to chicken out though, being all by myself , un-armed as of yet, in a foreign country… Yeah!, I was definitely about to lose my nerve." She wanted to sound as pitiful as she could, remembering how this guy never thought much of her in the first place. "I'm glad you are here, Erik"
"You don't have a weapon? Are you nuts?" He appeared to think he had just teamed up with a madwoman.
"No," she smiled, "I'm just a civilian now. I couldn't have gotten past airport security with a weapon"
"I was planning to buy something here, before going further on his trail"
He smiled understandingly, and she wiped her nose again.
"This allergies are killing me, you'd think with this clean air"….her voice trailed off
With her right hand hanging alongside her body, way out of his line of vision ; she flipped her right thumb and the cardboard box that was covering the syringe on her right hand fell off, revealing a small syringe with a medium size needle attached, the plunger fully extended.
She asked "I guess the first priority is to get me a weapon, and with your FBI ID you can do that for me, right?" Sounding pensive, she added, "do you know where can we buy a weapon around here?"
As she talked she was slowly raising her right hand. The syringe still out of his sight.
He seemed to be pondering about the gun purchase when she
stuck the needle in his neck and pushed the plunger.
His last look was one of surprise, as if saying "what the heck?"
His eyes rolled back and his head over to the side. She dropped the syringe in the pocket of her jacket while with the hand holding the tissue, pushed the lock button on the driver's door, as Erik's cell phone, still inside his jacket pocket, started to ring.
She reached inside his jacket and retrieved it. Holding it from the antenna with two finger, as one would a mousse from the tail.
With her left index finger, covered by the tissue, she rapidly pushed the auto close button for the power windows and retrieved her hand stepping away from the car.
She was deafened by the thumping of her own heart and noticed she was shaking.
She flipped the phone open with her right hand . A jumble of thoughts were racing through her head
Until now, Clarice Starling had never killed anyone outside the line of duty. Her killings had always been legally sanctioned, - as absurd as the terminology might now appear-. "What if Erik had lied?. What if he had an accomplice, someone else, a backup, waiting on the rear parking lot, someone aware there was trouble.?"
She moved the phone to her ear, all the while fervently wishing Dr. Lecter was here.
The voice came from behind her and, after a few seconds delay, again, from the earpiece of the phone.
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I'm exhausted , but I got this part out of the way. Now I can rest a bit.
Please let me know what you think of this chapter. I always appreciate it, more than I can say.
Clariz
