Hello! So here's chapter three...might not be quite as long as the others, but I hope you enjoy! Reviews are the best!
Disclaimer-I don't own the SOTL franchise or Thomas Harris.
There used to be a set of three apartment buildings in Baltimore. It wasn't that they were the only ones, which the most certainly weren't, but they now hold a bloody history as they fall into desecration. They were each a full level of a lush three story building, finely decorated to attract the kind of clientele with the wealth to afford a prolonged visit, but don't bother looking for them now if you're hoping for a pleasant stay in Baltimore. Many hotels would welcome your presence, especially if you plan on twittering your money away on their fine delicacies, and the apartment buildings that were rented for the last time are now useless.
They had an infamous leave a famous scene behind many years ago, and the repercussions of that have caused them to slowly fall into ruin, priceless paintings curling up around the edges, and paint letting its fine chips fall to decorate the floor.
Here he is now. Back in the day when the lovely buildings were in use, but not long before the incident, he came and booked all three apartments, paying in cash. The landlord understood. This was a place where many a dark deed was committed, and leaving behind no evidence was a necessary devil. If only he had run for the phone when he saw the slight slippage of a contact lens, and had assumed the color beneath was a trick of the light.
The man is returning to his apartments after making a call from a pay phone across town. He had not expected there to be an answer. He had in fact been enjoying the idea of his recipients surprise when she listened to the message, short as it may be. He knew that she was a little unstable. Would there be tears? The sudden rush of memories held behind a gate of hypnotics and forced prejudices? Or a viscous hate that emptied itself out onto the floor? He had come prepared for all scenarios, good and bad, and he didn't intend to leave without his prizes.
He was even prepared for the complete emotional breakdown that she had in front of her daughter, though he didn't yet know that that was the course of action he would have to take.
It had so far been a lonely existence, with three brief years of stability thrown in to test his mettle. He did not believe in God or heaven-for what creature supposedly of that good nature would allow him to live?-but when he followed the course of his own life, he sometimes toyed with the idea of Hell, and that he had been sent as its tool.
No.
He did not believe in those things. He merely played with the ideas as a child plays with its toys.
But his missed his love, and he missed his child. He had waited for her seven years, then twelve more after that.
Nineteen years.
Nineteen years was a long time to keep him waiting, and he had deemed the two people he cared for most ready for his arrival.
Preparations had been made.
The two lower floors of the building had been converted into splendid rooms for his future guests. He had examined their tastes, their lifestyle, everything about them that would add to his knowledge of their personas. As mentioned prior, he had come prepared. Four months on waiting and adding to stockpiles and files of his beloveds, four months of waiting and watching and slowly insinuating himself once again into their lives. Certain items he couldn't bring across borders had been once again supplied, and he was almost satisfied.
The victim had been planted.
The body of a man close to his love had been found, as one tricky phone call to the Baltimore Police Department's main office had proven. He had been sure to leave the marks of his modus operandi, his calling card, as one may say. He wanted to be identified. He needed to make sure that they knew he was back in town. Fear was a useful weapon for one to have on his side. Besides, he needed to leave his love a message, one that she couldn't mass over with her loss of memory. That tactic had been tried, and failed. Something much more upfront was needed.
Certain seeds of doubt had been sown.
The only thing he had left to do was wait until the time came to approach them.
He was ready. He could wait the slightest bit longer if need be. He had things to busy himself with, such as the job he had acquired in much the same way he had acquired his position in Florence.
'What a pity,' he thought 'that the similarities are obvious and yet no one has put them together. I wonder…'
He did not pause in his reading to take a sip of wine, taking in the words, the taste of the red liquid, and his thoughts all at once.
As a psychiatrist who examined him once in his youth had said long ago…
"He follows several trains of though at once, without distraction from any, and one of those trains is always for his own amusement."
That same psychiatrist also said that if one pushed him too hard they would lose him forever, and that he would not be quite the same. Though he had no notion of the prediction the psychiatrist made, the man we now see here went and proved him right many years ago, in a time much unlike our own.
This encounter is far after the events that broke him, and that train of thought never ends well, and he is still wondering.
'Could she do it? If she has paid attention to anything that has happened to her in life, if she has the ability to make those treacherous leaps…could she?'
He turns from his book, now focusing his attention fully on the wine and the pressing matters at hand.
He believes that she can. He has a knowledge of her that makes him believe that she was much like him, that the paternal aspects of her would allow her to link the pieces in her mind.
Perhaps she already knew. That thought giddied him. If that was the case, there would be no problem with his scheme whatsoever. However, if she was more like her mother than he anticipated, which was only a small chance given his research, then he would be discovered and set to death by injection.
He was prepared to face the consequences. They were living fine now, even if she was a little unstable at times, and they would suffer no serious loss at his passing. The only loss would be his, and he had strengthened himself for every possibility, even the ones that he most despised.
He wondered about death as well. He would, on occasion, allow himself to toy with the idea of seeing Mischa after he passed, but he hardly saw any truth in the matter of life after death.
Perhaps he should bring that up as well when he finally spoke with her. Twelve years is a very long time, and people could change in an instant. He would test her thoroughly and see if her views were similar to his. If they had changed, he had more work to do than he hoped, but he had planned for that, as well as if they had not. The latter was the choice he agreed with most. Her talents, her memory, and the reports of the occasional times she got in trouble, even the way she wrote-it all pointed to her being much more like him.
This thought thrilled him. He is looking forward to having his love and his child with him again, and this time he does not intend on letting them slip out of his grasp. There will be no more bowstrings that have the audacity to wake up his beloved from her waking trance. He will not allow for it. While no plan could ever be perfectly fool-proof, his is most certainly the closet there has ever been.
A boy of perhaps thirteen enters the room.
The man decides that he looks deceptively like his father.
The boy has an accent that appears to be French, but his speech is eloquent; he has been taught well, even if it is proven that he does not come from this country. He asks is he should serve more wine, or perhaps he asks if everything is fine. We are already miles away, following the man's mind as it flits through the streets, to a blockaded road across town where a body has just been discovered.
The boy has fled the fine study, almost as if he has had a premonition of the horrors that will occur in this very room not more than a month from now. These are the horrors that will finally shut the apartments down, and we hold the curse of being witness to them.
But we're not thinking about that now, and we did not hear Doctor Hannibal Lecter answer the boy's question, for we have been far too caught up in the splendor's of his memory palace.
He is currently reflecting upon his meal last night with Christopher Gell.
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