Marshaling Enough Empathy – Chapter Twenty-Four
Art let the clock tick over to ten then frowned, narrowed his eyes over at Tim's desk. By his calculations, his deputy was supposed to be back at work yesterday, but the schedule was confused by SOG interrupting the vacation count and maybe Art had it figured wrong. He had given it a day already, happy that Tim appeared to have a life outside of the Marshals Service and the shooting range and the bar. But by the second morning, this morning, he was flipping back and forth between a tiny bit annoyed and a tiny bit concerned. At 10:01 he called Camp Beauregard in Louisiana and had a chat with the head of SOG, confirming dates, then he did the math again, then he stood up and walked over to see Rachel.
"Rachel, you heard from Tim?"
She shook her head, didn't bother looking up.
"Call him at home for me, will you?"
"Why don't you do it?"
"Because," he stretched the word out, "if he sees my name pop up he won't answer 'cause he knows he's supposed to be back at work."
Rachel dropped her annoyed look completely and took up inconvenient concern. "He's supposed to be back now?"
"Yesterday."
She dug around in her purse and pulled out her personal cell phone to call him.
"You have two phones?"
"This one's for Nick and Ma…and Tim. It'll display my name." She raised a hand, whatever. "I've called him on it a few times. He'll answer. He always has his phone on him."
He didn't answer. She left a message, looked up at Art for orders.
"He's just not the type to go AWOL," said Art. "But maybe he's finally learning how to relax." He huffed, looked outside, looked out through the doors to the hallway. "Do you have any idea what he was up to with his time off?"
"I have a hunch."
"And why do I have a hunch you're not going to tell me what your hunch is?"
She smiled. "Give me an hour to call around?"
Art nodded, thoughtful. "Start with that Will Graham fellow. I have a hunch too."
Rachel stared back blankly, too surprised to cover the truth with a good lie.
"Uh-huh," he said, snapped his fingers at her then turned and headed back to his desk. "You all think I'm so stupid."
Rachel smiled watching Art walk away then dialed the only number she had for Will, an FBI number, and left a message. The receptionist wouldn't contact him or forward her call. "He's doing field work," was all she'd supply. Rachel hung up and dug through her drawer for Tim's apartment keys and told Art she was going to see if he were at home.
"Dr. Chilton." Jack strode into the office ignoring the hand offered; Will trailed in behind him. "Thank you for seeing us on such short notice."
"I was going to get in touch with you, actually," the doctor said. "I wanted to stop Agent Graham before he left this morning, but," he shrugged, "he seemed in a hurry."
"We have some questions…"
"I have discovered something of interest, I think," Dr. Chilton interrupted, walked behind his desk, hand on his chin as if deep in thought. "I might have found a link between your current investigation and a former client of mine."
Will looked over and rolled his eyes in disbelief at Jack then said to Chilton, "You've…just discovered this?"
"Yes, this morning while you were interviewing Dr. Lecter I was thinking back on his and my last session. We were discussing a former mutual acquaintance, a patient actually that he referred on to me…" He switched thoughts. "I've long believed that psychopaths have an affinity for each other and I think Dr. Lecter has had more than his share of seriously disturbed patients – of course, it becomes evident why now that we know what he is. My research suggests that psychopaths recognize a like mind and so these particular patients would keep returning."
"Like me?" Will suggested facetiously.
Dr. Chilton ignored him, continued, "This is a theory that has occupied me for some time and, in order to further my research, I've allowed – and maybe wrongly so, but no harm done – some discourse between Lecter and one or two of his former patients that I've had growing suspicions about. Yesterday I came across this." He held up a handwritten note. "It's correspondence between Dr. Lecter and… Well, I'll get to that in a moment. I think that Dr. Lecter has been encouraging – I don't know what else to call it. I'll have to give it some thought for my paper, the exact phrasing for the particular influence that…"
"Dr. Chilton, this is…all very interesting but can you get to the point, please?"
The doctor graced Will's outburst with a dramatic look of patience and condescension, smiled and said, "I have reason to believe that this former patient of both mine and Dr. Lecter's is the Chess Master." He held out the note, smiled smugly as Jack took it from him. "Of course, I want full rights to any academic publication on the psychiatric implications of their – what would I call it – their peculiar relationship."
"Tell me you're not buying into his 'I just discovered' bullshit! I'm beginning to think possibly Dr. Chilton shows...sociopathic tendencies." Will walked beside Jack back to the car, angry and agitated. "How long do you think he's been sitting on his suspicions?"
"Will," Jack had much the same look of patience for his profiler as Dr. Chilton had earlier, but without the condescension, "we can't prove any intent. Let's just move forward with this. I think he's cooperating now."
"Cooperating only because we're onto him. I promise you, we'll find some discourse between Hannibal and Frederick Hayes, too."
"It would explain a lot."
"This is why I detest any political appointments. I bet I could guess whose campaign he padded to get that job if I bothered to waste the time thinking about it."
"And whose political campaign would you guess I padded?"
Will snorted. "Are you…getting sensitive, Jack? I thought that was my job."
"Now who's getting sensitive?"
Will grinned. They were excited to finally be moving forward.
The ride back to Virginia was quiet after Jack made a rapid string of phone calls; both men were thinking ahead.
Finally Will said, "He's choosing his next victims. He's hunting...today – right now."
"We have a name."
"How long before…"
"The team is on it. We'll have an address soon enough."
"It's funny how urgent it seems now, now that we have something, when it was equally as urgent three months ago but didn't feel it."
Jack didn't respond.
"Can't this guy drive any faster?"
Tim came around slowly, cheek pressed into the cold floor, alone, thankfully. He lifted his head and gritted his teeth against the stiffness in his neck, the throbbing in his jaw and through his skull, righted himself and shuffled backward to lean against a wall. It was much like the first time he came to in this room only his jaw didn't hurt then. Drugs, he figured. Some kind of drug – he remembered a thick tongue and a thicker head the first time. He remembered someone coming up behind him in the parking lot of his apartment, a big man, big enough to subdue and carry his victims easily. So now Tim could answer Will's questions of the how and the where. It was more mundane than anyone figured. Abduction was rarely elegant though – simple and brutal worked. Why mess with it?
But how had he found him? Tim hadn't arranged a meeting, hadn't given away any personal information. They'd chatted a bit online – he assumed it was the same person. It had to be. The board he was presented with when the Chess Master finally came for him and introduced himself was the game precisely laid out that they'd been playing online, six steps beyond the last move from the last victims in Georgia. So how had he tracked down Tim's name, his address? The question ran loops, had run loops since he regained consciousness the first day. The only conclusion he could come to was that Will was right – the Chess Master was in communication somehow with Hannibal Lecter. But then how did Hannibal Lecter know? And there was the other side of the loop that chased the tail of the first part.
When the angry throbbing in his head had dulled to an ache, Tim explored the room again. It was damp and chilly and completely dark and he could only feel his way along the walls, awkwardly with his hands and feet bound, shuffle-hopping with his back to the wall, fingers exploring. It had the dimensions and the feel of a cold storage space, cinder block, no windows, at least not that he'd found yet, the outline of a door but it was solid and there was no handle on the inside. Did he keep all of his victims like this? Will had described every detail of the case to him that drunk afternoon at the bar, but there was no mention of any considerable time passed between the abductions and the murders – each was presumed killed within a day or two. And each of the victims was wealthy. Not Tim though, he'd never had much money. He was an anomaly in the killer's pattern. And that brought the connection back to Hannibal Lecter again. There was no other plausible explanation for why he was the one stuck in this shitty little room.
Fucking Hannibal Lecter. Tim promised himself then that he'd pay a visit to fucking Hannibal Lecter in his shitty little room in Baltimore once he got out of this mess.
Panic knocked again and Tim ignored it. He would get an opportunity to get the upper hand, but it would have to be when the Chess Master was with him, in the other room where he gave him food and they played out their game. Tim didn't understand that either. The game proved nothing; why continue it? Maybe Will could explain that to him when he saw him.
Damn Will, he thought. His life had been pretty level, routine, before Will. No one could've snuck up on him before. Before, he wouldn't have been distracted thinking about midnight bourbon tasting.
By the end of a week the panic was more persistent. Tim ignored it as best he could and dragged out the game and worked to get anything out of the man holding him prisoner. He waited and watched and baited.
"How long, do you think, before they make the connection between you and Hannibal and break down your door?"
It was the first time Tim had mentioned Lecter; the reaction was immediate and confirming.
"Dr. Lecter couldn't manage to do what I am going to do."
"And what's that? Get caught in under six months?"
Pride brought out the truth. "Kill Will Graham."
Of course – if it involved Hannibal Lecter then the target was Will. Tim was losing the battle with panic this time. How long before someone discovered he was missing and then how long until Will put the clues together to lead him here, and who would believe him when he spoke of his suspicions? No one had believed him so far. Tim had to get out of here before Will came looking, and Will would come looking eventually because Hannibal Lecter would make sure of it.
"If you manage to kill Will Graham, it's only because Hannibal wants you to."
"No. Graham is his prize and I'm going to take it from him."
"Sure, you keep on believing that. You against Hannibal Lecter – you really think you can outsmart him? Jesus, even in a high-security cell the man's got the one-up. Or with you, it's more like a ten-up. Speaking of, I think I've got my next move worked out." He pointed his chin at the board, all the movement his constraints would allow. "Queen's bishop to…"
The fist came this time expected and Tim moved with it – played dead.
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