Dr. Hannibal Lecter was surprised.
He had bought himself a laptop on this trip, figuring he would need it. To learn how to dial in to his ISP was not difficult. He had gotten an anonymous ISP and was relatively confident that his online peregrinations would not be able to catch him.
His web cruising was relatively innocuous; he stuck to the major news media and the Tattler's website. He'd always had a bit of a soft spot for the Tattler. Besides, the Tattler evinced no shame about printing contraband crime reports and such. It served his purposes far better than the legitimate media.
Cannibal's killer daughter destroys Indiana jail! Chaos and mayhem in her wake! All very silly, but it did tell Dr. Lecter what he wanted to know. His wayward daughter was in a small corner of Indiana, or she had been.
The file he had borrowed from Clarice told him more about his prey's whereabouts. Despite the fact that the Tattler accused Alice of masterminding the stunt at the Starkey County Jail, the FBI file stated that Chatiqua Miller was most likely pulling the strings. It wasn't in the style of Alice's prior killings.
He had an intellectual interest in Miss Miller, and it seemed that she had done a great deal in helping to free his daughter. Her destruction of the Starkey County Jail pleased him. Dr. Lecter found a certain pleasure in the collapse of any place of confinement. For that, he personally wished her the best. Still, his goal was to obtain custody of his daughter, and Miss Miller would simply have to cope as best she could. He had hoped to use her as a bargaining chip; Clarice could have Chatiqua and Colin, and he would have his daughter. Unfortunately, Clarice had not been willing to work with him on that.
In any case, he had to figure out where they would strike next.
It was hard to pick out a pattern, but Dr. Lecter believed he might have found one. The Homicidal Productions crew liked to copy. Chatiqua had talent at her work, but it was fundamentally derivative; she copied things she had seen other people do. What she was good at was taking pieces of pop culture and turning them into murderous snuff films.
She would have planned, Dr. Lecter thought. Somehow or another, she had kept Alice's bipolar disorder from making them noticeable. According to Clarice's notes on the file, she had hoped that might bring them around. This gave him more food for thought.
Clarice's mistake had been in trying to track Alice, not Chatiqua. It was Chatiqua who was the mastermind. She was the one who Clarice should have been tracking.
The murder scenes told him that she had a particular plan. Dr. Lecter did not think she had randomly chosen the sites. It was possible that she had, but he was inclined to think otherwise. This had the hallmarks of an organized killer, to use the FBI's simplistic means of looking at it.
If she had already chosen the sites of her films, then could he predict the next one?
Dr. Lecter believed that he could. He might not be sure; there wasn't enough evidence for him to be a hundred percent sure. Their travels had been all over the place; clearly, they were attempting to evade authorities by swinging widely north and south in their peregrination west.
Their films had also become more complex and required greater numbers of people and scenery. The first ones had been rather simplistic. This last one had required a lot of planning and had clearly been picked out beforehand. He did not think there would be a return to simpler ideas; Chatiqua's ego was growing. The fact remained: where would she go next?
Still, there had to be something. Dr. Lecter surfed the web, looking for tourist attractions, parks, anything that might attract the young woman's eye. For some reason he felt that the next one would be within two hours or so of the jail site. Far away enough that the police crawling over the rubble of the jail would not catch them; close enough that she would be able to set up and film relatively quickly. In that, Dr. Lecter thought, she was like most killers. Realizing her vision was almost an addiction with her. She would never stop.
Carefully, he began to form a list, the words marching across the paper in his bizarrely machinelike writing. A nearby wildlife park; perhaps they would try feeding someone to the lions. A vacated mansion in rural Indiana, right near the border, close to the Interstate. A sports hall of fame; one never knew.
When he was done, he closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to bridge the gap between himself and his prey. To each one he assigned a number reflecting his belief where they would strike next. He wasn't able to explain why he thought the way he did, and that displeased him. Dr. Lecter did not like leaving things to chance.
It was hard for him to concentrate on the list. His daughter was his duty. He had to recover her and get her somewhere where she would be safe. All the same, Clarice Starling's face kept creeping into the back of his mind.
…
Clarice strode from the Starkey County courthouse and pressed her lips together. She'd gotten everything she could from the Starkey County authorities. The Feds had sent up an explosives team to sift over the rubble of the jail. Still, she knew there was precious little they would come up with that would help her find her prey.
Josh followed her out a few moments later, and for a moment or two they stared across the street at the wreckage of the Starkey County Jail. They'd figured out that Alice and company had dropped by agricultural supply companies. Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil; the old reliable standby. They were easy to make and stable.
"God," Clarice said thoughtfully. "I can't believe they did this."
Josh nodded. "At least they didn't kill everyone in the jail," he pointed out. "They made efforts to evacuate everybody before they blew the jail. Honestly, it would've been easier to leave everyone there."
"They're still dangerous," Clarice said. "They didn't kill everyone, but they did kill a lot of people. Mostly guards. The inmates they left alone."
Josh shrugged. "Not that one girl," he said. "She'll need some counseling after all that."
Clarice chuckled. "Oh, she'll get by all right, I think." Then she glanced at him. "I think she sort of had a thing for you, you know."
Josh appeared somewhat taken aback. "Me? You've got to be kidding."
Clarice smiled and shook her head. "No, actually, I'm not. She thought you were cute," she gibed. "Maybe you can look her up when this is all over."
A flush of red crept out of his collar up his cheeks. She chuckled again and decided to quit teasing him about it. Yet it was true; he just hadn't seen it. Then again, his experience with women had included Alice Pierpont. Clarice supposed that would've skewed him on the subject of relationships a lot…in fact, about as much as her relationship with Hannibal Lecter had skewed her.
She let out a tired sigh. "I'm tired," she said. "This whole thing is exhausting. I…I have no idea how to catch them, any more than I did when this started." Admitting it was hard, but Josh of all people could understand. The Homicidal Productions crew was a fiendishly difficult riddle to solve. To add to the fun, every day they were free, innocent lives were at risk.
Josh nodded agreeably. "There's a Motel 6 out on the highway," he said. "Crawford got us rooms out there. He wants us to stick around, see if anything comes out of the investigation of…," he gestured at the wreckage of the jail.
Clarice sighed. She didn't think there would be; the Homicidal Productions crew had the luck of the devil. But one never knew. And it wasn't like she had any better ideas. She was tired. A bit of sleep would probably do her a world of good. She exhaled heavily.
"Okay," she said. "You can stay here if you want. I could use a shower and some sleep."
Josh shook his head. "That sounds good, actually."
Their car was a rather soulless Caprice, signed out of the Indianapolis FBI's motor pool. Clarice passed Josh the keys; she was tired and didn't want to drive. He drove fast but well, perhaps knowing that his FBI ID would keep him immune from speeding tickets.
She thought desultorily about this whole thing as trees flicked past in the window. Alice and Chatiqua and Colin, out there somewhere planning their next movie. And the joker in the deck, Dr. Lecter, out there hunting his daughter. What if he got to her first? He might not save Chatiqua and Colin, but he would take away Alice, and Clarice meant to have Alice back behind bars no matter what. Alice had set all this in motion, and she would pay for that.
The exit ramp was not far away. Josh took the exit a bit too fast for Clarice's taste, but she was too tired to object. Her feet hurt in these damn shoes. Even though she might be going over a crime scene, Crawford still expected 'professional dress'. Why weren't sneakers professional dress? It'd be more practical, that was for damn sure. But Crawford thought she ought to pick through rubble consisting of concrete and steel rebar in low-heeled pumps. What would ol' Crawford think of the stilettos Alice had been sporting?
She exhaled slowly, feeling the air hiss over her tongue. Her conscience told her not to be so harsh on Crawford. She was tired and cranky and troubled over other things, and she shouldn't take everything out on him. All she needed was a shower, comfy slippers, and some stupid movie on TV that she could zone out to and get her mind off the killers she was hunting. Just a few hours of relaxation and then eight hours of sleep would do her a world of good.
And that was what she did. The rooms at the motel were pretty much the same as hotel rooms all over America: clean, sanitized, and anonymous. Josh had a room a few doors down, but she had a room to herself. That was just as well. Her own little domain for right now. She bid Josh a good night and asked him to leave her be unless he absolutely needed her for something.
So she shucked off her suit and enjoyed a nice, hot shower in her anonymous plastic shower under her anonymous, plain metal showerhead. Then she wrapped her head in a towel, pulled on a T-shirt, flannel pants, and thick fuzzy socks. With some pleasure she plonked herself down on the bed and popped on the TV. There had to be something mindless on she could find in order to relax.
The TV did not disappoint her. There was indeed some silly movie that she put on and promptly ignored. The bed was comfortable and she was content, finally able to unburden herself a little. She could catch her serial killer in the morning.
Her eyes slipped closed in the flickering light of the TV. She didn't fall asleep, exactly, but drifted slowly into the borderlands between asleep and awake. It was comfortable and warm and that was fine with her for right now. It was a good place to be.
She barely heard the click of the passkey opening her hotel room door, nor did she hear the silent padding footsteps moving over to her bed until it was too late. What brought her to full wakefulness was the sudden bitter smell of chloroform on the cloth that had been clapped over her mouth and nose.
Clarice's eyes flew open and she struck out instinctively with one hand. Her warrior's training was strong. But her warrior's training also knew what sort of position she was in: to be blunt, she was fucked. Her gun was over on the table, and her captor was atop her, one hand holding the chloroform-soaked towel, one pinning down her right hand with unimaginable strength. She'd been caught napping and she wasn't going to win this one.
She twisted, but her captor had the drop on her and she could feel herself getting dizzy. She bucked and fishtailed and struggled to get free. She kept fighting until the very end, but she knew she was lost. Above her, maroon eyes sparkled with pleasure, and surprisingly full lips curved in a smile, quite red against pale skin. And then Clarice Starling finally flagged and slid into the darkness.