Professional Curiosity

Chapter Three: Full Disclosure

"Nobody is going to delegate a lot of power to a secretary that they can't control." ~Michael Bloomberg

My condition was passed onto me through genetics by my deadbeat father. It was the only thing that he had given me. He hadn't even given me his last name, nor had he given my mother any child support when he decided to leave while I was still in the womb. I had no symptoms as a child, it was left unchecked. I didn't have my first symptoms until I was well into adulthood. Something as simple as a minor sunburn at a summer's pool party had awakened my first introduction to Porphyria.

At first, it was internal; and I thought that I could merely come down with a stomach bug: severe cramping, vomiting, nausea. After a couple of days, blisters and lesions formed on my face; my lips receded and then my gums. The doctors did what they could: they referred me to nutritionists, dermatologists, hematologists, put me on drug regimens, and all it did was treat the symptoms; but it didn't make them go away.

So I bought my first dog. Bullets and poison left residue in the blood; but dogs killed clean. Several bodies and serrated livers, hearts, and spleens followed my wake, for I had no medical knowledge—half the time, I couldn't identify the anatomical body parts after the dogs were through with them. So I had to make an estimated guess: the heart was between the lungs…it was the only one I could be sure of what it looked like. Considering sun exposure left me withered, I hunting in campgrounds and parks. I kept what I could extract and piled them into coolers to take them home with me. I didn't have Hannibal's elevation; so the only way I could digest them aesthetically was to dry them and grind them into powder.

Protein shakes. Quite humorous, actually.

I moved through three states, with each state left with several reports about aggressive dogs biting neighbors or other pets; and I ended up in Baltimore, Maryland on Hannibal's doorstep, inquiring about a job. As his secretary, we worked close together, and it took Hannibal less than a month to persuade me to tell him my affliction. Under his scrutiny, he had been able to surmise that during the summer, I very rarely called in; though, my days off were consumed by frequent camping, hiking, mountain climbing—though only under the cover of night. During the winter, I was sick every other day, for no joggers run in the winter snow.

One night on a sick day, Hannibal had popped by initially for a welfare check, and one of my hunting dogs had tried to take a bite out of him. Precariously cat-like footsteps hadn't alerted me, but my dogs heard him creep through my house unannounced. I had excused the vicious attempt on his ankle: "They must like the way you smell, Doctor." And his reply had taken me off guard that I admitted to him my condition and my method to remedy it. He had said, with a smirk peeking from his thin lips: "Perhaps they are more inclined to know how I taste."

"I can help you, but only if you ask me to," he had said when he had invited me over to dinner for a third time at his home.

His clever mind, a beautiful delivery of cohesion and eloquent words on a foreign tongue, and the way his obsidian gaze penetrated my own mesmerized me in a way which simultaneously enchanted and terrified me. I was infatuated with his brilliance, touched by an almost absurdly immediate compassion for my plight. His skillful hands with a chef's knife, what he could do with a simple piece of sketch paper, scalpel, and lead pencil; how his fingers could bring out beautiful notes from a piano or violin astounded me; and I'd get lost in all of his beautiful masterpieces. How could one not fall in love with him?

Erudite, humbly critical though being surreptitiously arrogant, Hannibal was not without his flaws. He heavily criticized me for my methods: spree killing. "You are impulsive, reckless, dangerous. Clumsy attempts to retrieve raw organs, wasteful, and your means of obtaining them using your hunting dogs leave the body mauled. This is an act of an irresponsible fledgling killer. A fledgling without a guide. I can be your guide, if you let me."

I was not intellectual enough, intuitive enough, detective enough, to learn on my own that he was the Chesapeake Ripper. Such a clever man. So cunning, full of guile and persuasive, and that's why I believed that he had to know that he had me wrapped around his finger; for I had become so engrossed with him, so lost in his psychoanalytic mind that he knew that he had so much control over me—that I wanted him to control me—that he let me share in his darkness.

And it was so…

Beautiful.

So when he showed me his darkness, and he had learned of mine, I thought that there would be a sexual bond between us. I certainly felt it. And yet, he never so much as kissed me. I clung to every word he said, every gesture, every look with a desperate ache that whether or not he felt the same way, he would eventually understand that I was his most loyal acolyte—like the friendly, beautiful and blue-eyed Alana Bloom; the very strict and empathy-slacked Jack Crawford of the Bureau; or Hannibal's psychiatrist, Bedelia Du Maurier, the fair blonde whose soft-spoken words were delivered like cannon fire.

I trusted Hannibal with his entrustment to those whom he associated, so I had no thoughts that any of them suspected that he was the Chesapeake Ripper, nor that even Jack Crawford of the FBI knew that I was the Vampire of London. I trusted Hannibal's perception and intuition, for I was not as analytic as he. I wasn't a brilliant scientist. I was his secretary. I handled his affairs on the books; and he handled mind in the detective work.

I had left crimes in Minnesota, Georgia, and Florida; and while they all were covered by as the Vampire of London, Hannibal lured the FBI and its constituents from my name and led them to the messy beginnings of the Minnesota Shrike. It staved off the worst leads. Hannibal bought me time then. And although I wouldn't ask it of him outright, I hoped that he would buy me more time again.

I had left the scene with my dead husband on the floor and a live donor in the basement. Evidence…everywhere. The only hope that I had was that my MO was not there because I had shot my husband, rather than have the dogs kill him. And the donor was still alive, unharmed. I wouldn't ask Hannibal to fly to United Kingdom to get rid of the evidence; though, if he did, I would owe him a part of me, for mere thanks and a gracious cup of tea certainly wouldn't honor him at the risk of his job and freedom.

A debt like that would be repaid with something more costly.