Hello again ! Same drill, read and review :) If it's been a while, I'm sorry, but I haven't been home! ENJOY :D
Disclaimer-I don't own any characters except the ones I made up, nor do I own the origional sotry line, or Thomas Harris.
Maelie waited in the car for what seemed like forever, sitting silently until she could take it no more. Sighing at her mother's air-headedness, she slid out of the car and opened the door to hear two words being spoken in the kitchen.
"Hello, Clarice."
The voice ran through to her core, resonated through her head, but she filed it away for later investigation, as she had more tearing problems at the moment.
"Mom?" She followed the automated voice instructing her mother to delete the message, save for further use, or replay.
When Maelie got to the kitchen, her mother was hunched over the phone, trying to replay the message with shaking fingers and the wild eyes of a crazed beast. She looked up at Maelie without recognition, all the energy in her mind focused on the phone and the caller, and Maelie decided that she had to remember who that voice belonged to, because one day it might be a matter of life and death-not hers, but her mothers.
"Mom, shhh, it's okay, it's okay." She wrapped up her mother in her arms, one slight form to the next, comforting her like always, keeping her from falling into the unstable pit of her own mind. After a while, Starling calmed down, stopped clutching desperately at the phone and her daughter's shoulders, and pushed her away.
"I'm fine, Mae, I'm fine. It was just a very old….business associate of mine, who screwed me over one to many times. Haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want the same thing to happen to you."
Maelie didn't understand why her mother was so upset about a business associate, but she decided that her mother's sanity was of more concern for right now, and pushed that away in the same folder as the voice on the machine.
"Now-let's go to work."
By the time they finally got in the car, it was fifteen minutes past the time they were supposed to leave-add that to the coffee break and they were going to be way late.
"I've got to make a call, alright? Entertain yourself for a few minutes."
Maelie nodded, already sketching away on her notepad, as she always was, barely listening to the words as she drew a portrait of her mother.
"Hey Darren?"
She drew a flurry of hair, thinning with age but luxurious in a throwaway style, in a tangled mess around a perfect face.
"I need to call in a favor…"
A striking blue ball gown with a deep neckline and slits up to the thighs, sitting on a stool in a fancy restaurant of some sort.
"We're running late today…"
The restaurant is classy, filled with forms of other women in dresses, men in tuxedos, waiters dressed in silk suits, the other people only shadowy figures, except for one other.
"Yeah, and we still didn't get coffee…"
The man sitting behind Starling is outlined in sharp black, half hard angles and half smooth curves. His face was missing, his features meaningless, but he was decked out in a fine suit, a drink in hand and a foot on her mother's chair.
"Would you do that?"
Her hands were curved and cracked, one holding onto the receiver of a phone, claws in the form of fingers, the other grasping the edge of the seat with a determination that shook her to the core.
"You're the best!"
She wore thick army boots under the sheen of her dress.
"Call me if anything happens..."
Her face was a mess of pain and hunger, scrunched up one way and slacked the next, waiting for something and fearing it at the same time, wild recognition in her eyes.
"Bye, Darren."
The man's face had a pair of curving lips, the lips of royalty, and they were smeared with discord and a sick kind of want.
Starling hung up the phone, and Maelie flipped the page over discreetly.
"So what're you drawing now?"
"I don't know yet; I didn't start."
"You should draw Ardelia's family-her anniversary is coming up soon, you know."
Maelie smiled a fake smile, secretly wishing her mother was stable enough to see the thing she drew.
They arrived at the station just as a call was coming in. Maelie stuck with Starling but Benson, who idolized the fifteen year old, ran away from his dad and trotted right up to her. At thirteen, he had been around Maelie since he was born, and he had grown to love her in a pseudo-romantic way.
"Hi Maelie!"
She offered him a small smile, just enough to keep him wanting more, but she continued to follow her mother and Benson continued to follow her.
Then Darren, the station Chief, threw down the phone and said "We've got a murder case. It appears that Christopher Gell has been found, but we don't know the specifics yet. First three officers out the door get the case. Starling didn't scramble, as she was the head detective here, so she knew that they would go back to give her the case.
"Hey Starling, come here a sec." With time to lose, she fell back.
"I don't want you on this case." He didn't look her in the eyes, just kept shuffling papers on his desk.
"What? Why?"
"There are things about the case that I didn't report to the rest of the officers. His cheeks, along with slabs of meat from his back, are missing, and it appears that someone extracted his thymus."
Starling's blood ran cold, and behind her, her daughter listened intently, starting a new drawing of a man on the side of a road, cut up and bled out.
"Has…" Starling swallowed in a desperate attempt to rid the fear. "Has anyone proven it yet?"
"No, but it's been whispered around the crime scene investigators, and we're almost sure at this time."
"If you can't prove it, you can't legally keep me off the case. I'm going. Maelie, let's go."
Giving Darren a slick smile, Maelie added another thing to her drawing.
A plate, made of fine china and bloodied with the man's life, sat next to the body.
Maelie knew exactly who they were talking about.
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