Author's note: Yes, here I am, and I'm not dead. Just writer's block on this and working on originals. But here we are…
To Alice, this was all very amusing. After two years of deprivation and confinement, being free was just great. She had friends, freedom, and money. In her home had been enough cash to ensure that finances wouldn't be a problem for the time being.
That alone would have explained why she felt good. But she felt better than good. She felt great! She was ready to dance, sing, and shout. But Teek didn't want her to, so she simply sprawled out in the back seat and wanted to bounce off the walls of the car and thought her heart might burst. The car was confining, so she bounced in her seat excitedly.
"Teeeeeeek," she caroled from the back seat. "When are we going to be filming agaaaaain?"
Behind the wheel, Chatiqua sighed. Colin chuckled and looked back at her from the shotgun seat. She'd been bouncy like this ever since they'd hit the road that morning.
"Patience, girl, patience," Chatiqua counseled. She smiled ruefully. "Jeez, when you get happy, you get happy."
"Happy, happy, joy, joy," Alice concurred. "Let's start filming."
The Escort's tires grumbled over the tarmac. Chatiqua sighed again. "We need some things first," she said. "For one thing, we need a midget."
"Happy happy, joy joy, happy happy joy joy, happy happy joy joy, happy happy, joy joy, happy happy happy happy happy happy joy joy joy!" Alice sang from the back seat.
Chatiqua's shoulders twitched and her hands tightened on the wheel. "Alice," she said. Her voice was on edge.
"Midget midget, joy joy, midget midget joy joy," Alice started, and then looked down with mock guilt. "What are we gonna do with a midget anyway? Where do you get a midget? Midgets-R-Us?"
"I was thinking about an LPA meeting, actually," Chatiqua said. "I found out where one is. We'll get ourselves a midget."
"Are they gonna ride with me in the back seat or will we stick them in the trunk? Do regular handcuffs fit on midgets or are we gonna need little ones? How come it sounds like your teeth are gritted, Teek?" Alice asked merrily. "Okay, fine, I won't sing anymore. Let's see this script." From her tone of voice, giving up her musical urges was done only with the greatest of reluctance. But she would do it for her friends in the spirit of noble sacrifices. Pages flapped as she flipped through today's script.
"This is interesting," Alice added after a minute. "It's not like what we've been doing before, though." She examined the script. "Six victims? Wow, that's a lot."
"It'll all be set up beforehand," Teek said. "Then we need a Renaissance fair and a grassy field. And a paddock somewhere for the fun scenes."
"The fuuuuuun scenes," Alice agreed.
At the next exit, Chatiqua put on her blinker and got off the highway. She grabbed a piece of paper and consulted it.
"Okay," she said confidently. "There's a Little People of America meeting at a hotel here. We show up, say we're looking for a dwarf for a movie, and see what we get."
"I thought you said midget before," Alice said.
Chatiqua sighed. Colin snickered.
"You don't say midget to them," Chatiqua said. "Apparently they find it insulting."
Alice pondered that for a moment before grinning brightly. "How come 'midget' is insulting but 'dwarf' isn't?" she asked. "I mean, there was never a movie about Snow White and the Seven Midgets."
"They just find it insulting, that's all," Chatiqua said, feeling her teeth clench. "I don't know why. But don't ask them, OK? Let's not stick out here."
Alice was silent for a few minutes. The car turned onto the city streets and began heading for its destination. Like a cat, Alice waited for the right moment to pounce.
"Well, midget midget midget!" Alice sang out merrily. The car slewed in its lane as Chatiqua jerked. Next to him, Colin began to laugh. Chatiqua turned around and glared at the unrepentant woman in the back seat.
"Girl, knock it off," she said.
"What? It's a free country," Alice said archly. "I can say midget if I want to."
"I am gonna send you back to the asylum," Chatiqua threatened. "Now cut it out. You're driving me crazy."
A look of mock horror crossed Alice's face. She threw an arm dramatically against her forehead.
"Oh…please…. Miss Teek, show mercy," she cried. "Don't send me back to that mean old asylum. I won't say midget any more, I promise you. Show mercy to a lost little girl such as I. I want to be good. Really I do! I strive and yearn for a virtuous life. But I cannot help myself."
Chatiqua snickered herself. "Now that is overacting," she lectured.
"It's supposed to be," Alice said obligingly. "I can be subtle when I want to be, Teek. I promise I'll be good."
And she was good. When they pulled up at the hotel in which the meeting was being held, she was calm and professional as they explained what they wanted. They had a music video they planned to shoot and sought a little person. All the while, Alice was calm and cool and did not say the word 'midget'. She waited for that until they had their selected victim spirited away and handcuffed in the trunk.
They had their actor. All they needed now was a site to shoot and some victims.
…
Clarice was surprised.
She was standing in Alice Pierpont's basement for the first time in two years. Some local Baltimore boys were searching the house, and there was already quite the media circus outside. Fortunately, Alice's property was large enough that they could keep the press at bay. The search warrant for the premises stated that the entire grounds were covered, and so the TV crews and reporters had to stay off the grounds or risk arrest.
She was surprised for a few reasons. For one thing, she had expected that returning to the room where she had once been held captive would frighten her. She had been kept in a cage here for a week and a half. She had been tortured physically and mentally here. This was the only place in recent memory where Clarice Starling had actually feared for her life. Surely she would feel something on returning to this place.
But it was the same as a thousand other crime scenes. She felt…nothing. This was a place where a crime had been committed, and it was her job to check it out and see what clues she could divine. Emotionally, the basement was a burnt-out lightbulb, an empty wastebasket. Negative. Empty. Just…there.
The other reason she was surprised was that the basement was quite different. Sheetrock had been placed along one side to make the hallway that they had seen in the 'Clarice' section of the previous video. Then there were the two cells. It was easy to forget that only twenty yards away was where she had been locked up and terrorized; nothing looked the same.
Josh Graham glanced into the cells with a curious eye. She watched him carefully. It was amazing what he could come up with sometimes. The past two years had taught him a lot.
"They had to have drugged the guy in there, or restrained him," he said softly. "Look. This is built of sheet rock. You couldn't keep someone in a cell like this."
He stopped then, as if aware that he might remind Clarice that she had been kept in a cage made of steel within a few running paces of here. She simply waved it away.
"Good," she said calmly. From a plastic case next to her she took a container of Dragon's Blood – bright red fingerprint powder. Dusting it carefully on the sheetrock walls might give them fingerprints. They had Chatiqua's name, but any extra proof helped, and they needed to put a name to that orderly who had shot Agent Hemd.
"The kitchen is definitely where the Marcia Skewer thing was shot," Josh said. "Matches up exactly. Plus the kitchen table lit up like a Christmas tree when they put Luminol on it. The earth is disturbed in the back yard. That's probably where they buried the victims. We're calling in a forensics team to dig it up."
She nodded. "Good work, Josh."
"I also found something she left," Josh said quizzically, and held up a sheet of paper. On it, in script she recognized as Alice's, was a short note.
Dear Josh,
I know you'll find this immediately. I know I get sarcastic at times, but I hope you're OK and I'm glad Clarice is too. Shooting her was not part of the plan that I knew of. But I've got to be going; there's nothing you'll find here that's useful. But have fun!
Remember the bedroom, Josh? That might bring back some memories.
A.P.
Clarice found herself oddly affected by the letter. It was usual Alice, sarcastic and dangerous on one hand. Yet under it, Clarice never could shake the idea that there was a sad, lonely person who desperately wanted to be liked under it all. She'd seen both sides.
"Okay," she said. "Look. Here are some prints. Help me get 'em."
Very carefully, the two FBI agents began to lift the prints from the piece of sheetrock. Clarice was pleased. They were good prints. She could tell that just by looking.
"All right," she said. "Let's go back and run these."
Josh shrugged. "Don't you want to stay?" he asked.
Clarice shook her head. "The forensics team here is top-notch," she said. "They'll get pictures and all that for us. Let's see if we can put a name to these prints." So they headed out to the car and left Alice's home to the forensics team. Clarice took the wheel; she liked driving, and Josh didn't seem to care terribly much either way.
As they picked up the expressway back to Quantico, Josh let out a reflective sigh.
"Something up?" Clarice asked.
"It was just…weird to go back there," Josh said. "You know. That's where she lived."
And that's where we lived for a bit, Clarice thought. But the house had seemed empty of its prior occupant. No evil had soaked into the floorboards and timbers of the house. Or the basement, for that matter.
"I guess," Clarice said, studiously studying the road ahead. "To me it was just another crime scene."
Josh shrugged. "If that's how it was for you," he said simply, as if Clarice was somehow insensitive.
"Do you still think about her?" Clarice probed.
Josh shrugged again. "How could I not?" he asked. "I remember what she did to you and me. She's dangerous, and she's out there. We've got to get her."
Clarice nodded and pressed her lips together. She knew all about that. Whether Alice was genuinely evil or not was irrelevant. A rabid dog might not be evil, but you didn't let it bite innocent people.
Once back at Quantico, they got lucky. Running the fingerprints popped up a match. Clarice grinned.
"Gotcha," she said. "Look here. Colin Barksdale, DOB 5/10/1980. Arrested six months ago for a felony B&E. Charges dismissed." She grinned savagely. "But we got him. Definitely enough for an APB."
To fill out the paperwork for an all-points-bulletin was not that hard. Clarice was satisfied. Alice, Colin, and Chatiqua. A happy little criminal family. For a moment she wondered if Colin was as crazy as the two women were.
Hmmm…two women, one man. I wonder if that's going to stress things out. Both the women in question are sociopaths. Jealousy may become an issue. Maybe that's something we should look out for. A black woman, a white woman, and a white guy aren't unheard of. Maybe there will be problems in paradise.
Satisfied with herself, Clarice glanced at the clock. Four-forty-five. She decided to reward herself for putting a name to the third accomplice by knocking off early. After all, she had the case files at home, and she could work just as easily there.
So she bid Josh good night and headed out to her Mustang. As she drove home, she found herself pondering.
We need a break, she thought. It isn't enough to get their videos and analyze them. I need something to help me get ahead of the curve. I have to figure out where they're gonna hit next. It's hard; we know they went back to Alice's place, but I don't have any other familiar places they might go. Not even Alice is loony enough to go back to juvenile hall.
That conundrum occupied her mind for the rest of the night. Her early day off proved to be a late night in front of her own computer, staring at the files and trying to think of something. She left her .45 on the coffee table in her living room, tired of it digging into her side. Outside, the day darkened to dusk and became night without her realizing it.
When the front door opened, she thought at first it was Ardelia. She paid it no heed. If 'Delia wanted something she'd come over to Clarice's side of the duplex. They knew better than to stand on ceremony. They'd lived together long enough.
Then there was a sudden rush of disturbed air in the room. Clarice sat up and looked over at her .45. But before she could do more than look, a hand snaked around her, pinning her wrist to the armrest. Another arm glided easily around her throat. The sharp point of a knife pressed her windpipe in warning.
"Hello, Clarice," a voice said calmly. "Good to see you again."