Chapter Nine
Monday, 3:30 AM, Four Seasons, Room 328
Clarice Starling's first thought, as she floated up out of the dark and into consciousness, was that she felt like she'd been hit by a truck.
Her skin hurt. Her bones hurt. Her breasts hurt. There was a dreadful burning ache at the fork of her legs and her face felt like a swelling balloon filled with hot, pulsing blood. By God, for some reason, it felt like even her HAIR hurt. And, as if all that wasn't enough, she itched all over. Probably from dried blood.
Hoo-boy, she thought, strangely amused. What a genius I am! I actually volunteered to have one of the most violent men in the world tie me up and beat the living crap out of me. Think I'll join Mensa. Just as soon as they take the body cast off.
Good job, sweetheart, wherever you are! I'm a wreck. And thanks for punching me out before you really got going. That was considerate.
He'd certainly done some damn fine work. She hoped it hadn't been too terrible for him, although she greatly feared that it probably had been. But she would have bet the farm that as bad as she felt, she probably LOOKED at least ten times worse.
She actually would have smiled then, had she not become aware of the sound of soft, shocked male voices in the room with her. Deliberately keeping the volume way down. So. She had been discovered, and soon these officers, these men, would touch her, try to rouse her. Even before the paramedics arrived. They would have their questions, thousands of them.
Uh-huh. Almost time for her to go on-stage and begin to play out her part.
Over the course of her first year in the company of Dr. Lecter, she had learned much of the theory and practice of the mnemonic system called the "memory palace" from him. Her practical nature had seized on the advantages of such a system at once, and her own memory palace had been under construction for some time. She had stored a great deal of information in the completed portions already, and would store more as time passed.
But she had also learned from Dr. Lecter the less conventional uses of such a system, far beyond the mere storage and convenient retrieval of facts. She too had learned the knack of living, sometimes, within the mental walls of her own making, and her palace, like his, also offered an internal refuge from the real world.
In a comfortable, sunny cottage with a view of a meadow in bloom past quaint mullioned windows, Clarice Starling sat in an antique rocker and sipped at an illusory cup of "Smart People's Tea". The famous herbal blend that had been the specialty of Ardelia Mapp's fierce little grandmother tasted godawful, but it really did seem to help stimulate thought. Even in its purely imaginary form. The various pains of her body had been left behind, as had the presence of officers in the room with her. She was alone, calm and unhurried, able to plan out the smallest details of the performance she would soon start to give.
What would shock the most? What would seem most real to these officers, these men? How could she put them off-balance and keep them that way? How could she keep their questions short and lacking in detail or insight? How could she direct attention away from any discrepancy in this faked scene that she and Dr. Lecter might have overlooked in their haste?
How might a woman who has just spent a year in the clutches of the Devil himself behave?
Clarice sought and found the stillness at the center of herself. She finished her tea before she rose from her rocking chair and returned to the world outside her own mind.
She opened her eyes to the bedroom and noticed that her right eye was apparently swollen shut. She realized that she was bound with the duct tape. She saw that her gown had been slashed, just as she'd suggested, and that one of her breasts was exposed to view, bloody bites like livid rose petals marking the pale flesh. She had the fleeting impression of four men in the room, three agents and one uniformed cop.
She took a deep breath and opened her aching, swollen mouth and shrieked like Hell's own clarion.
All four of the law enforcement officers in the small bedroom jumped at the terrible, shattering sound.
Clarice screamed and screamed and screamed. Gentle, soothing hands touched her, and she screamed. Soft, comforting voices murmured to her, and she screamed. Hurried requests for immediate medical assistance were repeated into radios, and she screamed. The intermittent flashing of cameras recording the crime scene before it would be changed assaulted her one open eye, and she screamed. The bonds at her wrists and feet and elbows were quickly and quietly removed, and she screamed. The first simple questions were put to her, and she screamed.
"It's okay, you're safe, you're all right, we're police. What's your name, honey?"
She screamed.
"Can you tell us your name? Do you know your name?"
She screamed.
"Can you sit up? Are you hurt anywhere, inside? Can you move? How many fingers am I holding up?"
She screamed.
"Who did this to you? Can you tell us? Who did this? Who did this?"
She screamed.
But, of course, they knew who had done it. Or, at least, they believed that they did.
Clarice could scream no more. A sharp little pain had lodged like a jagged piece of bone in her throat. She resorted to panicked, hoarse, hysterical whispers and darted terrified glances all around herself. She flailed weakly with her newly freed arms and kicked her feet awkwardly as though she meant to run but had forgotten how.
"Is he still here? Oh, God, is he here? Where is he? Where is he?" she demanded of those around her, widening her undamaged eye in a perfect semblance of stark, unseeing terror.
"Where is he where is he where is he whereishewhereishewhereishe . . ."
She allowed her voice to trail off into incoherent moans. She could feel pity and horror and outrage pouring off the various law enforcement officers in the room in waves. Many normal, good men, she knew, forced to confront the naked anguish of a victim of sexual assault head-on, will often feel the sting of phantom guilt themselves, regardless of their own innocence. It's as though they know or imagine they know some dreadful secret about themselves, about all men, even if they have loved and respected women all their lives.
These men, Clarice saw, were cringing away from her pain as though they had somehow caused it. She saw how they averted their eyes from her naked breast as though embarrassed to be caught peeking. She saw how all their investigative training and professional detachment had deserted them, and left them just four men alone in a room with a woman who had suffered unimaginable brutality. She saw that none of them knew what to do.
So far, so good, she thought, satisfied. Wow, she hurt. She briefly considered nipping back into her memory palace for another cup of tea. She had a feeling she was going to need it, and besides, all that screaming had hurt her throat. But first, one more important little thing . . .
"Clarice Starling . . . " she gasped, weakly, almost inaudibly, trembling from head to toe. "I'm Clarice Starling. I . . . I used to be with the Bureau."
Monday, October 16, 4:45 AM, Summerlin
Dr. Doemling regarded Margot Verger closely as she stood in her doorway, one thickly muscled arm thrown across the threshold, as though to bar his entry. Silently looking back at him, pale blue eyes unreadable.
She was dressed in pajamas and robe, as though she'd been in bed when he'd rung her doorbell at this unlikely hour, just as he'd expected. But her gaze was clear and intent, and her demeanor showed none of the bewildered, just-awakened confusion he had counted on.
"Good morning, Ms. Verger," he'd said. "I wonder if you remember me?"
"Yes. Doemling. From Baylor." There had been no hesitation or uncertainty in her answer at all. Not much visible emotion of any kind, in fact.
"I'd like to discuss a mutual acquaintance with you . . . Margot. A good friend of yours, apparently, judging from what I saw here just last night. Must I mention the name?"
He'd expected some denial, or perhaps a pretense of incomprehension, at least initially. But there had been none. No hostility, no anger, no fear. Nothing.
"Maybe you'd better come in, Dr. Doemling," had been her only answer, and she'd stood to the side of the door with a short, curt beckoning gesture.
Now he stood, watching her, trying to divine the import of her apparent calmness, and what it might mean for him.
She'd been brutalized in her youth by her dead brother. It was a matter of court record. Flatness of affect was a common symptom among incest survivors. Especially in stressful situations. A learned defense response. Individuals who had sustained such childhood traumas often remained unusually susceptible to suggestion and domination well into their adult years.
Perhaps this little interview he had planned might prove even easier than he'd hoped.
He believed that it was careful consideration on his part that formed his next decision. But he was deluding himself. It was his greed and his narrowness and his pathetic, threadbare egotism that actually moved his feet over the threshold. He followed her inside the house.
She led him down a dark hallway to the right of the door.
"We'll talk in my study, Doctor. I'd rather not wake anyone."
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Just as you wish . . . Margot. Perhaps a little privacy would be best while we chat."
She stopped at a door and opened it, revealing a pleasant room that looked out on the large patio, furnished with a desk, office equipment, many books. French doors opened a crack to the fresh, predawn air. A single lamp burning on the desk.
"Yes, privacy," she agreed, still expressionless. She made another curt waving gesture toward the study door. "After you."
She was a big, powerful woman. Quite capable of doing him physical harm, should he turn his back on her and let her have an advantage. Yet, if he wished to control the course of the upcoming negotiations, he must keep the psychological upper hand, he must appear completely confident. He moved past her into the room, and was gratified to have passed her without incident, to have been proven right in his chilly little calculations.
Without being invited, he chose a chair near the French doors off the patio, back to the glass. The sun would rise as they discussed the specifics of his new, improved career and lifestyle, and the early light would be in her face, while obscuring his own. Another slight, subtle advantage.
She took a chair opposite to his, just as if he'd told her exactly which to take. There was a small dish of mixed nuts on an occasional table beside her. She took up a pair of walnuts, and he heard the tiny clicking sounds of the hard shells grinding against each other in her hand.
A moment of tense silence unreeled in the pleasant, dimly lit room.
"Well? What do you want?" Margot asked, at last.
Not quite the opening tone he would have wished. Her bald directness was disconcerting, shifted the balance of power more toward her side of the court. It was very important, for all of their future dealings, that he establish the correct pattern of dominance now. She was pushing. He decided to push back.
"I must say . . . Margot . . . I was surprised to see him here. So chummy, the two of you were, last night. The sick bastard did kill your brother, after all. But I suppose that rather convenient death put you in an enviable position, ultimately. All that wealth and power, all in your hands, after all those years of waiting, of being the LITTLE sister that Mason hurt so badly. Still . . . Hannibal Lecter is not the sort of person one expects to see at the top of anybody's guest list."
He'd hoped to see her flinch, at least a little, at the mention of the name. But he was disappointed. She showed no visible reaction, and made no comment. The crunching of walnut shells was the only sound in the room.
"The man's a mad dog, Margot. You're very wrong to trust him, no matter what little favors you may think he's done for you. He could have turned on you at any time . . . would have, in all probability. You, or Judy Ingram, or even little Michael, it wouldn't have made any difference to him. In a way, I've done you a service."
"What, exactly, HAVE you done, Dr. Doemling? Did you turn him in? Speak to the police? The FBI? Will there be an official knock at my door a little later this morning?"
"I thought we could keep all this between ourselves, Margot. That would be best, wouldn't it? More comfortable for all concerned?"
"Who did you talk to? What did you say? If you're going to blackmail me, I'll want a full accounting of what . . . 'service' you're prepared to offer. We are discussing blackmail terms here, aren't we?"
"This doesn't have to be unpleasant . . . Margot. But that's entirely up to you. I spoke to the FBI at one o'clock this morning. I gave them his hotel, and a description of his new face. I, for one, never mentioned your name. They'll have him in custody by now, of course, unless he's already dead. I somehow don't really think he'd let them take him alive, do you? But, if they did . . .you tell me, Margot. Would HE turn YOU in?"
She didn't answer. Just stared at him for a time, with her pale, unwavering gaze. He began to feel vaguely unsettled. None of their exchanges, so far, had been anything like the dialogues he'd scripted earlier in the theater of his expectations.
Then, Margot smiled, a cold, humorless expression that showed her teeth, but never touched her eyes. The walnuts rolling in her powerful hand cracked.
"You think Hannibal Lecter killed my brother Mason, don't you, Dr. Doemling? Well, why shouldn't you? That's what everyone believes. He SAID he did it, after all. I'll tell you a little secret, though, if you'd care to hear it. Want to hear it, Dr. Doemling? Huh? Do you have ANY interest in the truth at ALL?"
"What the hell are you trying to - " he started to bark, but she rolled right over him.
"Do you? Want to hear it? Yes? All right, then, I'll tell you. I killed Mason myself. I stuffed a live eel down his filthy throat and waited until he drowned on his own bile while the eel chewed up his tongue. But first I shoved a cattle prod up his ass and zapped him a good one. He came like Vesuvius erupting, believe me, you should have seen it, it was something. Dr. Lecter's suggestion, if you really want to know. Worked like magic, too. Nine months later, Mikey was born. Michael HANNIBAL Verger. A family joke, you understand."
Dr. Doemling would have risen from the chair he'd chosen, but a small, strong hand had suddenly fallen on his shoulder from behind, from the direction of the open French doors that he himself had put his own back to. He would have screamed, but another hand clamped over the lower half of his face with terrifying strength, squeezing his jaw shut, crushing the cartilage in his nose instantly, cutting off his air.
"Good morning, Dr. Doemling," a sibilant, edged whisper in his ear. A voice he knew, and now wished, much too late, that he had never, ever recognized. "I'm so very glad to find you here."
"What a silly little man you are, Dr. Doemling," Margot said, almost sadly. "What an over-reaching, naive fool."
Blood from Doemling's crushed nose pooled in his throat and sinuses and choked him. He tried to move and the hand at his shoulder gripped and twisted and wrenched. A blinding, searing sheet of pain cut through him and he heard his collarbone snap as his shoulder was dislocated. He was drowning in his own blood and he couldn't scream and he didn't dare to move.
"You'll be dead in a minute or two, Dr. Doemling, if I don't take my hand off your mouth," Hannibal Lecter said. "I don't want that. If I take my hand away, can I trust you not to scream? Tap once with your foot for 'yes'."
Doemling felt his own foot tap at the carpet, from very far away, as though he had nothing to do with it, as though it was happening in another room, or another world.
Dr. Lecter withdrew both hands and came around from behind Doemling's chair. He stood very close to Doemling, and leaned down to look into his face. He watched, head cocked at a slight angle, as Doemling crouched back in his seat and gasped for air and tried to clear the blood out of his throat.
"You mustn't bleed on Margot's rug, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said quietly. "We cannot be an inconvenience to our hostess. Swallow, don't spit."
Doemling watched their eyes, Lecter's and Verger's, as he struggled to find breath and swallowed blood. He saw no mercy there. Not a shred.
Margot Verger's eyes were as pale and blue and remote as the October sky at noon.
Lecter's were the color of blood spilled in a distant age, bright scarlet sparks wheeling in the darkened redness, unblinking, preternaturally intent. Inhuman.
Doemling tried to speak, his puffed nose muffling and distorting his voice almost comically.
"Margot . . . please . . . "
"We'll be going, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter interrupted. "We have much to discuss, you and I. We'll observe the sunrise together, shall we? Stand up. Do it now."
"I . . . I can't," Doemling whispered, completely unmanned.
His eyes were filling with tears. The third time in his life that this terrible man had made him cry. Thrice in a single lifetime. How could things have possibly gone this hideously wrong? How could this really be happening?
Lecter leaned even closer into his face, close enough to kiss. Or to bite. Points of red light burned in his eyes like twin bloody constellations in a lunatic universe, cold inches away from Doemling's shrinking gaze.
"You'll walk out of here with me on your own two feet, Dr. Doemling," Lecter hissed into his face. "Or I'll drag you out on ragged STUMPS. My patience has limits. You exceeded them several hours ago. Stop sniveling and stand up."
Doemling rose, shakily, trying to stiffen his wobbly knees, eyes swimming. He dared not disobey, and was terribly frightened that he might fall and anger Lecter further. Strange how avidly one would seek to stay alive, even if only for a few more minutes, even if those few additional moments of life would hold only torment and terror.
Strange how you could never quite believe you were really going to die.
Doemling turned his head to Margot Verger, moaning at the wretched pain the movement caused to his broken clavicle.
"Please," he begged her. "Please, stop him. Don't let him do this. You can't let him take me out of here. You know what he'll do to me."
Margot considered. She might have been a black-robed justice in a court of the Inquisition, coolly considering a condemned penitent.
"Stop him? How would I do that?" she asked, clearly not expecting an answer. "No, actually, Dr. Doemling . . . I don't really know what he'll do to you. And I don't want to. But I do know what YOU would have done to me. Me and my family."
She turned to Dr. Lecter and pronounced her sentence.
"He's yours. Get him out of here."
Doemling moaned as Lecter's hand fell heavily upon him again, pulling and guiding him towards the door of the study, digging painfully into his injured shoulder, grinding the broken ends of his collarbone. Prodding him along like livestock in a killing pen.
"Thank you, Margot," Dr. Lecter murmured from the doorway. "For everything. I'm in your debt. I won't forget it."
She sighed heavily. "Come back when you're done and I'll see what I can do to help you," she said, not looking at Doemling at all. He might have been dead already. "I feel responsible for a lot of this. Let me help you. Will you do that?"
He considered. "I don't hold you responsible for any of this, Margot. This isn't your fault. And you needn't feel you have to make up for Muskrat Farm now, you know. All that has been over and done a long time."
"I know that. But you'll need help. Let me help you, Dr. Lecter," she repeated, and then said no more. She waited for him to decide, letting a silence broken only by the frightened, helpless weeping of Doemling take its course.
"All right," he answered after a time, softly, almost as if musing to himself. "If you want to. I will need help, I'll admit. I seem to be in rather a difficult position, just now."
Margot nodded once, satisfied, and wordlessly walked past the two men, through the door. She did not look back as her long, athletic stride quickly took her down the dark hallway and out of sight.
"Just us, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said to his terrified prisoner. There was a small, serene, almost gentle smile on his pale face. His cruel, unyielding grip deepened and tightened at Doemling's shoulder.
"Come. We'll have to hurry if we hope to see the sun come up. You, in particular, won't want to miss that. And I'll offer you a small bargain, how would that be? You're familiar with bargains, Dr. Doemling, are you not? Refrain from screaming now, while we're still in this house . . ."
He paused and moved his face very close to Doemling's, still gripping and crushing the psychologist's ruined shoulder, hissing and hissing through his sharp white teeth.
"Refrain from screaming now, Dr. Doemling, and I'll give you my solemn oath, that later, once we're away . . . out in the desert . . . I promise you that then, I'll let you scream. You can scream then, Dr. Doemling. You can scream . . . ALL . . . YOU . . .WANT."
They left Margot Verger's house together, rushing east into the open desert in a stolen car, hurrying to catch the sunrise, the last Dr. Doemling would ever see.
Later, at dawn, in a barren, washed out gully in the desert, Dr. Doemling discovered for himself that Hannibal Lecter was a man who always kept his promises. He screamed and screamed, just as Clarice Starling had done in a fancy hotel room reeking of spilled blood little over an hour before.
And Dr. Lecter, just as he'd promised he would, let him scream all he wanted.
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Monday, 3:30 AM, Four Seasons, Room 328
Clarice Starling's first thought, as she floated up out of the dark and into consciousness, was that she felt like she'd been hit by a truck.
Her skin hurt. Her bones hurt. Her breasts hurt. There was a dreadful burning ache at the fork of her legs and her face felt like a swelling balloon filled with hot, pulsing blood. By God, for some reason, it felt like even her HAIR hurt. And, as if all that wasn't enough, she itched all over. Probably from dried blood.
Hoo-boy, she thought, strangely amused. What a genius I am! I actually volunteered to have one of the most violent men in the world tie me up and beat the living crap out of me. Think I'll join Mensa. Just as soon as they take the body cast off.
Good job, sweetheart, wherever you are! I'm a wreck. And thanks for punching me out before you really got going. That was considerate.
He'd certainly done some damn fine work. She hoped it hadn't been too terrible for him, although she greatly feared that it probably had been. But she would have bet the farm that as bad as she felt, she probably LOOKED at least ten times worse.
She actually would have smiled then, had she not become aware of the sound of soft, shocked male voices in the room with her. Deliberately keeping the volume way down. So. She had been discovered, and soon these officers, these men, would touch her, try to rouse her. Even before the paramedics arrived. They would have their questions, thousands of them.
Uh-huh. Almost time for her to go on-stage and begin to play out her part.
Over the course of her first year in the company of Dr. Lecter, she had learned much of the theory and practice of the mnemonic system called the "memory palace" from him. Her practical nature had seized on the advantages of such a system at once, and her own memory palace had been under construction for some time. She had stored a great deal of information in the completed portions already, and would store more as time passed.
But she had also learned from Dr. Lecter the less conventional uses of such a system, far beyond the mere storage and convenient retrieval of facts. She too had learned the knack of living, sometimes, within the mental walls of her own making, and her palace, like his, also offered an internal refuge from the real world.
In a comfortable, sunny cottage with a view of a meadow in bloom past quaint mullioned windows, Clarice Starling sat in an antique rocker and sipped at an illusory cup of "Smart People's Tea". The famous herbal blend that had been the specialty of Ardelia Mapp's fierce little grandmother tasted godawful, but it really did seem to help stimulate thought. Even in its purely imaginary form. The various pains of her body had been left behind, as had the presence of officers in the room with her. She was alone, calm and unhurried, able to plan out the smallest details of the performance she would soon start to give.
What would shock the most? What would seem most real to these officers, these men? How could she put them off-balance and keep them that way? How could she keep their questions short and lacking in detail or insight? How could she direct attention away from any discrepancy in this faked scene that she and Dr. Lecter might have overlooked in their haste?
How might a woman who has just spent a year in the clutches of the Devil himself behave?
Clarice sought and found the stillness at the center of herself. She finished her tea before she rose from her rocking chair and returned to the world outside her own mind.
She opened her eyes to the bedroom and noticed that her right eye was apparently swollen shut. She realized that she was bound with the duct tape. She saw that her gown had been slashed, just as she'd suggested, and that one of her breasts was exposed to view, bloody bites like livid rose petals marking the pale flesh. She had the fleeting impression of four men in the room, three agents and one uniformed cop.
She took a deep breath and opened her aching, swollen mouth and shrieked like Hell's own clarion.
All four of the law enforcement officers in the small bedroom jumped at the terrible, shattering sound.
Clarice screamed and screamed and screamed. Gentle, soothing hands touched her, and she screamed. Soft, comforting voices murmured to her, and she screamed. Hurried requests for immediate medical assistance were repeated into radios, and she screamed. The intermittent flashing of cameras recording the crime scene before it would be changed assaulted her one open eye, and she screamed. The bonds at her wrists and feet and elbows were quickly and quietly removed, and she screamed. The first simple questions were put to her, and she screamed.
"It's okay, you're safe, you're all right, we're police. What's your name, honey?"
She screamed.
"Can you tell us your name? Do you know your name?"
She screamed.
"Can you sit up? Are you hurt anywhere, inside? Can you move? How many fingers am I holding up?"
She screamed.
"Who did this to you? Can you tell us? Who did this? Who did this?"
She screamed.
But, of course, they knew who had done it. Or, at least, they believed that they did.
Clarice could scream no more. A sharp little pain had lodged like a jagged piece of bone in her throat. She resorted to panicked, hoarse, hysterical whispers and darted terrified glances all around herself. She flailed weakly with her newly freed arms and kicked her feet awkwardly as though she meant to run but had forgotten how.
"Is he still here? Oh, God, is he here? Where is he? Where is he?" she demanded of those around her, widening her undamaged eye in a perfect semblance of stark, unseeing terror.
"Where is he where is he where is he whereishewhereishewhereishe . . ."
She allowed her voice to trail off into incoherent moans. She could feel pity and horror and outrage pouring off the various law enforcement officers in the room in waves. Many normal, good men, she knew, forced to confront the naked anguish of a victim of sexual assault head-on, will often feel the sting of phantom guilt themselves, regardless of their own innocence. It's as though they know or imagine they know some dreadful secret about themselves, about all men, even if they have loved and respected women all their lives.
These men, Clarice saw, were cringing away from her pain as though they had somehow caused it. She saw how they averted their eyes from her naked breast as though embarrassed to be caught peeking. She saw how all their investigative training and professional detachment had deserted them, and left them just four men alone in a room with a woman who had suffered unimaginable brutality. She saw that none of them knew what to do.
So far, so good, she thought, satisfied. Wow, she hurt. She briefly considered nipping back into her memory palace for another cup of tea. She had a feeling she was going to need it, and besides, all that screaming had hurt her throat. But first, one more important little thing . . .
"Clarice Starling . . . " she gasped, weakly, almost inaudibly, trembling from head to toe. "I'm Clarice Starling. I . . . I used to be with the Bureau."
Monday, October 16, 4:45 AM, Summerlin
Dr. Doemling regarded Margot Verger closely as she stood in her doorway, one thickly muscled arm thrown across the threshold, as though to bar his entry. Silently looking back at him, pale blue eyes unreadable.
She was dressed in pajamas and robe, as though she'd been in bed when he'd rung her doorbell at this unlikely hour, just as he'd expected. But her gaze was clear and intent, and her demeanor showed none of the bewildered, just-awakened confusion he had counted on.
"Good morning, Ms. Verger," he'd said. "I wonder if you remember me?"
"Yes. Doemling. From Baylor." There had been no hesitation or uncertainty in her answer at all. Not much visible emotion of any kind, in fact.
"I'd like to discuss a mutual acquaintance with you . . . Margot. A good friend of yours, apparently, judging from what I saw here just last night. Must I mention the name?"
He'd expected some denial, or perhaps a pretense of incomprehension, at least initially. But there had been none. No hostility, no anger, no fear. Nothing.
"Maybe you'd better come in, Dr. Doemling," had been her only answer, and she'd stood to the side of the door with a short, curt beckoning gesture.
Now he stood, watching her, trying to divine the import of her apparent calmness, and what it might mean for him.
She'd been brutalized in her youth by her dead brother. It was a matter of court record. Flatness of affect was a common symptom among incest survivors. Especially in stressful situations. A learned defense response. Individuals who had sustained such childhood traumas often remained unusually susceptible to suggestion and domination well into their adult years.
Perhaps this little interview he had planned might prove even easier than he'd hoped.
He believed that it was careful consideration on his part that formed his next decision. But he was deluding himself. It was his greed and his narrowness and his pathetic, threadbare egotism that actually moved his feet over the threshold. He followed her inside the house.
She led him down a dark hallway to the right of the door.
"We'll talk in my study, Doctor. I'd rather not wake anyone."
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Just as you wish . . . Margot. Perhaps a little privacy would be best while we chat."
She stopped at a door and opened it, revealing a pleasant room that looked out on the large patio, furnished with a desk, office equipment, many books. French doors opened a crack to the fresh, predawn air. A single lamp burning on the desk.
"Yes, privacy," she agreed, still expressionless. She made another curt waving gesture toward the study door. "After you."
She was a big, powerful woman. Quite capable of doing him physical harm, should he turn his back on her and let her have an advantage. Yet, if he wished to control the course of the upcoming negotiations, he must keep the psychological upper hand, he must appear completely confident. He moved past her into the room, and was gratified to have passed her without incident, to have been proven right in his chilly little calculations.
Without being invited, he chose a chair near the French doors off the patio, back to the glass. The sun would rise as they discussed the specifics of his new, improved career and lifestyle, and the early light would be in her face, while obscuring his own. Another slight, subtle advantage.
She took a chair opposite to his, just as if he'd told her exactly which to take. There was a small dish of mixed nuts on an occasional table beside her. She took up a pair of walnuts, and he heard the tiny clicking sounds of the hard shells grinding against each other in her hand.
A moment of tense silence unreeled in the pleasant, dimly lit room.
"Well? What do you want?" Margot asked, at last.
Not quite the opening tone he would have wished. Her bald directness was disconcerting, shifted the balance of power more toward her side of the court. It was very important, for all of their future dealings, that he establish the correct pattern of dominance now. She was pushing. He decided to push back.
"I must say . . . Margot . . . I was surprised to see him here. So chummy, the two of you were, last night. The sick bastard did kill your brother, after all. But I suppose that rather convenient death put you in an enviable position, ultimately. All that wealth and power, all in your hands, after all those years of waiting, of being the LITTLE sister that Mason hurt so badly. Still . . . Hannibal Lecter is not the sort of person one expects to see at the top of anybody's guest list."
He'd hoped to see her flinch, at least a little, at the mention of the name. But he was disappointed. She showed no visible reaction, and made no comment. The crunching of walnut shells was the only sound in the room.
"The man's a mad dog, Margot. You're very wrong to trust him, no matter what little favors you may think he's done for you. He could have turned on you at any time . . . would have, in all probability. You, or Judy Ingram, or even little Michael, it wouldn't have made any difference to him. In a way, I've done you a service."
"What, exactly, HAVE you done, Dr. Doemling? Did you turn him in? Speak to the police? The FBI? Will there be an official knock at my door a little later this morning?"
"I thought we could keep all this between ourselves, Margot. That would be best, wouldn't it? More comfortable for all concerned?"
"Who did you talk to? What did you say? If you're going to blackmail me, I'll want a full accounting of what . . . 'service' you're prepared to offer. We are discussing blackmail terms here, aren't we?"
"This doesn't have to be unpleasant . . . Margot. But that's entirely up to you. I spoke to the FBI at one o'clock this morning. I gave them his hotel, and a description of his new face. I, for one, never mentioned your name. They'll have him in custody by now, of course, unless he's already dead. I somehow don't really think he'd let them take him alive, do you? But, if they did . . .you tell me, Margot. Would HE turn YOU in?"
She didn't answer. Just stared at him for a time, with her pale, unwavering gaze. He began to feel vaguely unsettled. None of their exchanges, so far, had been anything like the dialogues he'd scripted earlier in the theater of his expectations.
Then, Margot smiled, a cold, humorless expression that showed her teeth, but never touched her eyes. The walnuts rolling in her powerful hand cracked.
"You think Hannibal Lecter killed my brother Mason, don't you, Dr. Doemling? Well, why shouldn't you? That's what everyone believes. He SAID he did it, after all. I'll tell you a little secret, though, if you'd care to hear it. Want to hear it, Dr. Doemling? Huh? Do you have ANY interest in the truth at ALL?"
"What the hell are you trying to - " he started to bark, but she rolled right over him.
"Do you? Want to hear it? Yes? All right, then, I'll tell you. I killed Mason myself. I stuffed a live eel down his filthy throat and waited until he drowned on his own bile while the eel chewed up his tongue. But first I shoved a cattle prod up his ass and zapped him a good one. He came like Vesuvius erupting, believe me, you should have seen it, it was something. Dr. Lecter's suggestion, if you really want to know. Worked like magic, too. Nine months later, Mikey was born. Michael HANNIBAL Verger. A family joke, you understand."
Dr. Doemling would have risen from the chair he'd chosen, but a small, strong hand had suddenly fallen on his shoulder from behind, from the direction of the open French doors that he himself had put his own back to. He would have screamed, but another hand clamped over the lower half of his face with terrifying strength, squeezing his jaw shut, crushing the cartilage in his nose instantly, cutting off his air.
"Good morning, Dr. Doemling," a sibilant, edged whisper in his ear. A voice he knew, and now wished, much too late, that he had never, ever recognized. "I'm so very glad to find you here."
"What a silly little man you are, Dr. Doemling," Margot said, almost sadly. "What an over-reaching, naive fool."
Blood from Doemling's crushed nose pooled in his throat and sinuses and choked him. He tried to move and the hand at his shoulder gripped and twisted and wrenched. A blinding, searing sheet of pain cut through him and he heard his collarbone snap as his shoulder was dislocated. He was drowning in his own blood and he couldn't scream and he didn't dare to move.
"You'll be dead in a minute or two, Dr. Doemling, if I don't take my hand off your mouth," Hannibal Lecter said. "I don't want that. If I take my hand away, can I trust you not to scream? Tap once with your foot for 'yes'."
Doemling felt his own foot tap at the carpet, from very far away, as though he had nothing to do with it, as though it was happening in another room, or another world.
Dr. Lecter withdrew both hands and came around from behind Doemling's chair. He stood very close to Doemling, and leaned down to look into his face. He watched, head cocked at a slight angle, as Doemling crouched back in his seat and gasped for air and tried to clear the blood out of his throat.
"You mustn't bleed on Margot's rug, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said quietly. "We cannot be an inconvenience to our hostess. Swallow, don't spit."
Doemling watched their eyes, Lecter's and Verger's, as he struggled to find breath and swallowed blood. He saw no mercy there. Not a shred.
Margot Verger's eyes were as pale and blue and remote as the October sky at noon.
Lecter's were the color of blood spilled in a distant age, bright scarlet sparks wheeling in the darkened redness, unblinking, preternaturally intent. Inhuman.
Doemling tried to speak, his puffed nose muffling and distorting his voice almost comically.
"Margot . . . please . . . "
"We'll be going, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter interrupted. "We have much to discuss, you and I. We'll observe the sunrise together, shall we? Stand up. Do it now."
"I . . . I can't," Doemling whispered, completely unmanned.
His eyes were filling with tears. The third time in his life that this terrible man had made him cry. Thrice in a single lifetime. How could things have possibly gone this hideously wrong? How could this really be happening?
Lecter leaned even closer into his face, close enough to kiss. Or to bite. Points of red light burned in his eyes like twin bloody constellations in a lunatic universe, cold inches away from Doemling's shrinking gaze.
"You'll walk out of here with me on your own two feet, Dr. Doemling," Lecter hissed into his face. "Or I'll drag you out on ragged STUMPS. My patience has limits. You exceeded them several hours ago. Stop sniveling and stand up."
Doemling rose, shakily, trying to stiffen his wobbly knees, eyes swimming. He dared not disobey, and was terribly frightened that he might fall and anger Lecter further. Strange how avidly one would seek to stay alive, even if only for a few more minutes, even if those few additional moments of life would hold only torment and terror.
Strange how you could never quite believe you were really going to die.
Doemling turned his head to Margot Verger, moaning at the wretched pain the movement caused to his broken clavicle.
"Please," he begged her. "Please, stop him. Don't let him do this. You can't let him take me out of here. You know what he'll do to me."
Margot considered. She might have been a black-robed justice in a court of the Inquisition, coolly considering a condemned penitent.
"Stop him? How would I do that?" she asked, clearly not expecting an answer. "No, actually, Dr. Doemling . . . I don't really know what he'll do to you. And I don't want to. But I do know what YOU would have done to me. Me and my family."
She turned to Dr. Lecter and pronounced her sentence.
"He's yours. Get him out of here."
Doemling moaned as Lecter's hand fell heavily upon him again, pulling and guiding him towards the door of the study, digging painfully into his injured shoulder, grinding the broken ends of his collarbone. Prodding him along like livestock in a killing pen.
"Thank you, Margot," Dr. Lecter murmured from the doorway. "For everything. I'm in your debt. I won't forget it."
She sighed heavily. "Come back when you're done and I'll see what I can do to help you," she said, not looking at Doemling at all. He might have been dead already. "I feel responsible for a lot of this. Let me help you. Will you do that?"
He considered. "I don't hold you responsible for any of this, Margot. This isn't your fault. And you needn't feel you have to make up for Muskrat Farm now, you know. All that has been over and done a long time."
"I know that. But you'll need help. Let me help you, Dr. Lecter," she repeated, and then said no more. She waited for him to decide, letting a silence broken only by the frightened, helpless weeping of Doemling take its course.
"All right," he answered after a time, softly, almost as if musing to himself. "If you want to. I will need help, I'll admit. I seem to be in rather a difficult position, just now."
Margot nodded once, satisfied, and wordlessly walked past the two men, through the door. She did not look back as her long, athletic stride quickly took her down the dark hallway and out of sight.
"Just us, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said to his terrified prisoner. There was a small, serene, almost gentle smile on his pale face. His cruel, unyielding grip deepened and tightened at Doemling's shoulder.
"Come. We'll have to hurry if we hope to see the sun come up. You, in particular, won't want to miss that. And I'll offer you a small bargain, how would that be? You're familiar with bargains, Dr. Doemling, are you not? Refrain from screaming now, while we're still in this house . . ."
He paused and moved his face very close to Doemling's, still gripping and crushing the psychologist's ruined shoulder, hissing and hissing through his sharp white teeth.
"Refrain from screaming now, Dr. Doemling, and I'll give you my solemn oath, that later, once we're away . . . out in the desert . . . I promise you that then, I'll let you scream. You can scream then, Dr. Doemling. You can scream . . . ALL . . . YOU . . .WANT."
They left Margot Verger's house together, rushing east into the open desert in a stolen car, hurrying to catch the sunrise, the last Dr. Doemling would ever see.
Later, at dawn, in a barren, washed out gully in the desert, Dr. Doemling discovered for himself that Hannibal Lecter was a man who always kept his promises. He screamed and screamed, just as Clarice Starling had done in a fancy hotel room reeking of spilled blood little over an hour before.
And Dr. Lecter, just as he'd promised he would, let him scream all he wanted.
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