Marshaling Enough Empathy – Chapter Twenty
Will turned and looked from the steps of the courthouse, day one of the trial, searched the buildings to the east and spotted a rifle, tried to see something in the outline of the man holding it to identify him as Tim. He was pretty certain it was him, imagined the face behind the scope. Will had promised himself he wouldn't look. But he did and was glad he'd given in to temptation – the glimpse had the feel of rubbing a rabbit's foot or knocking on wood. He thought he saw a small movement, his sniper giving him the thumbs up, but it was hard to tell from that distance and the figure was in black and wearing black gloves. He waved, told himself there was a grin and a signal and it was a good thing to think about walking through the doors to face his monster.
After the first day, everyone fell into a routine. Will would smile briefly at Hannibal when he was escorted into the room and would receive a subtle and courtly bow in return, respect for an adversary. The witnesses, expert or unfortunate, the attorneys, everyone said their piece, droning and hushed, no one untouched, each still in shock at the horror. Every morning Will would turn at the top of the steps to the courthouse and wave; each break he would step outside again, regardless of the weather, and look up, wonder if it was Tim or someone else taking a shift.
"Is that him?" she asked the third morning, always aware of Will's movements.
He smiled shyly. "I confess, Alana, it's a bit like having…a guardian angel."
"That sounds romantic."
"Not in this case."
The Thursday of the first week Tim scored a lunch break at the same time that the judge called one for the trial. He stepped out behind Will at the courthouse entrance, slapped his shoulder to get his attention.
"Buy me a coffee," he demanded.
Will was wound tightly, on the stand the entire morning, jumped and stumbled the first step.
Tim laughed, a sound incongruous with the SOG gear, properly official and all business even without a rifle – combat ready, intimidating.
"You look good…in black," Will said, collecting himself. He continued down the steps, Tim following.
"I'm an excellent accessory for the well-dressed funeral attendee. Just call my office for availability."
"I could see you at a shotgun wedding, too."
"I'll do any event for a price."
"How about a weekend relaxing in Virginia?"
"Now that I'll do for free. I've been told I need the practice."
"I thought you were pretty decent at it."
Tim grinned. "You just don't let up."
Will stopped, put out a hand and stopped Tim. "Why would I? Can you give me even one good reason?"
"Coffee?" Tim reminded, bringing the conversation to an end and back to the beginning.
"This way."
The coffee and the company brought the world back in focus for Will. It was easy to get lost in the courtroom drama though he worked to keep distance between it and himself. He caught Tim up on the proceedings.
"And Hannibal's pleading not guilty to everything. His attorney's main line of defense is that it was…easy to…wrongly frame someone for the Chesapeake murders once, why not again – the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. It's all true and a good angle with a jury. But I look at him now and wonder how he ever fooled me."
"You said yourself when you profiled the Chesapeake Ripper that nobody would be able tell what he is – that he would look normal. So, you were right."
Will didn't feel any comfort from the acknowledgement, looked up at the sky and considered the weather. "Looks like rain this afternoon. Do you get to go inside?"
"No," Tim snorted. He glanced at Will, laughed at the look of concern. "I don't mind a bit a rain. It's better than the heat any day."
They were sitting on the steps, talking, keeping a space between. The distance seemed to be bothering Tim more than Will – he kept looking over, looking to close it somehow but unwilling.
"You going home tonight?" he asked.
"I go home every night. I…hate hotels. I spend a lot of time in them."
Tim nodded. "Pick me up after. I can get my bike."
"It's only Thursday. I thought you wouldn't be able to get away until Friday?"
Tim shrugged. "I can sneak away once or twice. And if I pick up my bike I can follow you home after the debrief tomorrow."
"Sounds good. I'm done at five." Will spoke quietly, slowly, not wanting to scare Tim off. It felt good to want something that bad.
"I'll be another hour after that, maybe more if they decide to change up the game plan at all. Can you wait?"
"There's a bar two blocks up on the left, north-east corner, with the original name, The Bar. They, unlike that…place in Lexington, have a fairly decent single-malt selection. I'll happily wait there."
"Do they have much of a bourbon selection?"
"I couldn't tell you. You'll have to come see for yourself."
"Alright, I will." Tim stood up, checked his watch. "You'd better get something to eat. You only got fifteen minutes left."
"What about you?"
"Don't worry about me." A wry head tilt and a grin. "They feed the guard dogs well."
The gunshots could be heard from inside the courtroom. Everyone jerked with each shot, already on edge, a collective expectation of violence. Will was watching Hannibal's reaction to a testimony at the time, noticed that he barely twitched at the interruption, just turned and looked directly at Will and smiled knowingly.
Will tried to talk down his apprehension, but turned anxiously to look over his shoulder when the door opened. A US Marshal approached the bench and spoke quietly to the judge. Will chewed a bit on his lower lip thinking about Tim, concerned about who was at the giving end and who was at the receiving end of those bullets.
Hannibal watched.
The judge called for a short recess, unable to get order back in the room. Even he appeared eager to see for himself what was going on outside. He cautioned everyone to remain in the building until it was reported safe to leave. Reported by whom? Will wondered about procedure. He followed the crowd out into the hallway then slipped out the back door to the parking lot and between the buildings to the front.
He handed his ID to a Marshal standing at the corner of the courthouse façade, gestured with a nod to the street beyond. "What happened?"
"Some idiot decided to run by across the street firing a gun loaded with blanks. He's lucky he didn't get himself killed by one of our guys on the roof." She pointed directly at Tim when she said it. "Hell, he's lucky one of us down here didn't shoot him."
"Why didn't you?"
She gave him a funny look.
"I meant how did you know he was…firing blanks?"
She laughed at the choice of phrase. "We didn't. He waited till he was in the crowd there to pull. We didn't have a clean shot. Someone tackled him – a regular Bruce Willis." She shook her head, said, "It's a circus. I hate court security on a trial like this. All the weirdos collect in one spot."
There was a delay reconvening. Will waited until the last possible second to take his seat, hovering at the door looking for the cue from the court staff that signaled the return of the presiding judge. There was a nudge at his elbow.
"I need to talk to you before you leave tonight," Jack said quietly. "It's important."
"How long will it take?"
"I'm not sure. Why? Do you have somewhere you have to be?"
"I was meeting a friend for drinks."
"Tell him you'll be late." Jack walked past him to the bench behind the prosecuting attorney.
Will stared a minute at Jack's back, concerned that there was more to the use of the pronoun 'him' in Jack's last statement than an arbitrary assignment of gender. He ducked out the doors quickly to text Tim, then in again just ahead of the judge.
The SOG team was gathered in one of the hotel rooms for a beer at the end of the day. Tim joined them to pass the time, was interrupted by a summons from his team leader, left the rest of the guys bitching about the heat this late in the summer and walked the half block to the SOG command center set up in a vacant office across from the courthouse.
He stepped through the door and stopped short. The collection of people sitting around the room was not what he was expecting – Jack Crawford, the prosecuting attorney, the Marshals SOG team leader, the defense attorney, Will Graham, a woman and another man he didn't recognize. Whatever this was about, it was likely not worth the half a cold beer he'd left behind.
He addressed Jack Crawford, "Don't tell me – Dr. Lecter's convinced you that I'm his accomplice?" It was a bit insolent under the circumstances, even for Tim, but it had been a long day and the atmosphere reminded him of other meetings on another continent – officers, Military Intelligence and other unnamed agencies, a consortium of trouble for a lowly grunt. He felt a strong impulse to include a 'sir' at the end of his sarcasm.
A couple of the men sitting at the table wriggled uncomfortably in their seats, but not Jack; he smiled. "We would look pretty foolish if we allowed ourselves to fall for that a second time."
"Which foolishness are we talking about? Me as the Chess Master or Will Graham here as the Chesapeake Ripper?"
Another smile, this one less giving. "Take your pick."
Tim turned to his team leader next. "What's up?" he asked, was directed back to the Head of the Behavioral Sciences Unit by a shrug and a curious head nod.
Jack stood up and walked around to face Tim. "Dr. Lecter has asked to meet with you."
"Me?"
"You."
"By name?"
"By name."
"Why me? And how does he know my name?" He let his gaze flicker around the room at the faces but only really paid attention to the expression on Will's – worry and anger and a barely perceptible head shake, no.
"We're not sure why he's..." Jack began.
Will was on his feet, indignant, interrupting. "I told you why – he's playing with us."
"Hannibal Lecter doesn't do anything without a reason."
"His reasons are irrelevant, Jack. The man is a psychopath. The only thing we need to figure out is how. How does he even know...Deputy Gutterson's name? It's not been in the papers."
"Again, uh, why does he want to talk to me?" Tim repeated the question, thinking it must be important. "And honestly, why would I want to talk to him?"
Will smiled, hard, no humor. "Thank you, Tim. That's an excellent question." He turned, glaring, to Jack. "Why would Deputy Gutterson want to talk to Hannibal Lecter? What good could possibly come of it?"
The two men were locked in a silent battle, an argument without words. Everyone was riveted.
"Is there something we're not being told?" It was the woman in the room who interrupted the silent dialogue. "Jack? Is there something we should be told?" She waited a beat. "Will?"
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, the frustration starting to show. "Special Agent Graham believes that Dr. Lecter is getting information about him and our cases somehow and that we should consider the idea that he was in communication with the Chess Master."
"Is…is in communication."
"Is?" The SOG team leader looked at Tim. "I thought you killed the bastard."
"I missed."
"You missed?"
"He didn't miss." Will was defending him. "He shot the wrong guy." He seemed to realize that he wasn't helping and tried to recover. "No, he shot the right guy, just…not the man responsible for the other killings. It's complicated."
"Exactly, Will. It's too complicated. Occam's razor."
"Hannibal Lecter, Jack. Nothing is ever straightforward when he's involved."
"You're assuming he's involved. Back to my original point – Occam's razor."
"It stinks of him. He as much as confessed to me that he manipulated Frederick Hayes."
"Maybe it's you he's manipulating, again."
The woman stood and walked across the room, stopped beside Tim and said, "Hi. I'm Dr. Alana Bloom. Are you as confused as I am?"
She accomplished her goal – distracting Will.
"Alana, Deputy Marshal Tim Gutterson – Tim, Dr. Alana Bloom." Will completed the introductions in a rush, then added for Alana's benefit, "I went to see Hannibal...after the shooting in the cave. He knew about Hayes, he knew Tim by name…even then. Someone is feeding him information. He implied that there are two killers."
"Implied." Jack reinserted himself into the conversation.
"The timelines never fit!"
"Hey!" Tim stepped between Will and Jack. "Just answer my questions. Why does Dr. Lecter want to talk to me? And why would I want to talk to him?"
Jack took a minute to answer, watching Will's agitation, watching Tim watching Will. He turned deliberately away from his profiler, focused his attention solely on the Marshal. "None of us – not me, not Agent Graham, neither Dr. Bloom nor the head of the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Chilton –," Jack pointed him out, the unknown man at the table, "has any idea why he wants to talk to you. But you, Deputy, want to talk to Dr. Lecter because I want to find out." He turned his head when Will let out an angry breath. "Will, we discussed this."
"No, we did not…discuss this. You talked – I listened. And then I said, no, and you ignored me. Now I'm saying it again publicly. No!"
"Hey." Tim waved to get their attention. "I'll talk to him." An off-hand shrug. "What the hell."
"Thank you, Deputy."
This time it was Will who turned and left.
xxxxxxxxx
Author's Note: Hey, there, Jenna! You need to sign up on the FanFiction site so I can PM you.
