Marshaling Enough Empathy – Chapter Twenty-Five

"Agent Graham?" The young woman at reception ran Will and Jack down in the hall at Quantico, not an easy feat in high-heels considering the purposeful stride in their walks.

"Agent Graham!"

Will stopped, turned.

"I have a message for you from a Deputy at the US Marshals Service," she said, breathless. "They've called three times today trying to get a hold of you."

Will's stomach danced. He avoided eye contact with her, grabbed the pink message slips from her hand. "Uh…thank you, uh…" He left it hanging, hurried after Jack, jogging to catch up. He glanced at the name and number at the top of the first form, then the next two, stopped abruptly and stared when the disappointment hit. It wasn't Gutterson, not Tim; it wasn't his cell number; the calls were from Rachel, all of them.

"Will?"

Will waved Jack on. "I think… I think I need to return this call." He turned and walked back outside and phoned the number.

Rachel picked up at one ring; she was brusque. "Tim's missing."

"Missing? How missing?"

"Will, you're my first phone call for a reason. Is there anything I should know?"

"No. I… He left here with the rest of his team at the finish of the trial last week. He…he still had vacation time."

"He was supposed to be back at work yesterday. I've been by his apartment – no wallet, no phone. Raylan found his keys on the ground by his bike in the garage, mail's piled up. Will, is there any reason why he wouldn't want us looking for him?"

Will tried to make sense of it, walked in a circle, hand worrying curls on his head then running up under his glasses, squeezing the bridge of his nose. What did he know? "Tim wouldn't… Well, he certainly has issues but…not as far as…"

"He's not with you?"

Will stopped pacing and looked out across the parking lot to the training field, eyes unfocused, thinking about the connection between them, the hole it created, growing every day. Then he thought about other connections – between him and Dr. Lecter, Dr. Lecter and Dr. Chilton, Dr. Chilton and the serial killer they were hunting. How did Hannibal know about Tim? Through Dr. Chilton. How did Dr. Chilton know? Through the Chess Master or Frederick Hayes, maybe both. But Will didn't need to know exactly how. He was suddenly certain that the Chess Master was aware of Tim's relationship with the lead profiler at the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit and then he began to worry because he kept company with monsters.

"I think I'd better come to Lexington," he said, hung up and ran to the parking lot.


"You made good time," said Art, leading Will from the airport terminal to his car. "Who did you run over to catch your flight?"

"Uh, two or three nuns, an old lady with a walker. When did anyone...see Tim last?"

"We were hoping you could tell us. His team leader said they split up at the airport. That's the last anyone saw him or talked to him."

"I haven't heard anything since...the night before that."

Art glanced over at his passenger then back to the road. "I'm a little concerned that you felt the need to get here so fast. What's on your mind, Agent Graham?"

"It's…nothing, I hope. I just… It's hard to shut off from a job like mine. I'm always imagining the very worst scenarios."

Art nodded, not feeling any better. "He's a pretty capable young man."

Will didn't say anything else on the drive to Tim's apartment. Upstairs, he stepped past Art through the door and straight over to the computer table – no wallet, no phone, no keys. "Rachel said that Raylan found his keys downstairs by his bike?"

"That's right."

"Show me."

Will stood looking at the Harley, closed his eyes and ran through the possibilities. "He must've been distracted… He would've come at him from behind. Drugged him, maybe...likely. Tim would've... I've always insisted that he had to be a big man."

Art tried to keep up with the disjointed and one-sided conversation. "Who, Tim?"

"The Chess Master."

"I thought Tim…"

"Wrong guy."

Will walked around to the wall side of the bike, noted the scratches on the gas tank near the logo and on the vance and hines, shut his eyes. "It was knocked over." He saw in his mind the struggle, Tim lifted off his feet, kicking out. "Do you have…any idea how much care Tim takes of this motorcycle? He wouldn't drop it. He just...wouldn't."

Art brought his hands up to his hips. "So you think I should start full-out worrying."

"Yes."


Will ended the call, dropped his phone hand, discouraged.

"Anything?" Rachel asked, though she could read his expression well enough.

"Nothing. The house…was empty. It appears that it hasn't been occupied for at least a couple of weeks. Jack's got his team on it. They're looking for other residences. The man, unsurprisingly, has money. His father, again, not surprising, was found dead in his pool last year. Drowned. Toxicology came back with," he waved his hands, "...nothing, and he was in excellent health and a very good swimmer. No head trauma…" Will exhaled loudly. "It was ruled accidental death. Clearly…not."

The Marshals were standing around Raylan's desk, waiting for direction. Will couldn't look at them; he had nothing to offer. He took off his glasses and covered his face with his hands.

"I need someplace to think, alone…please."

Art led him into his office, shut the screens, said, "We'll get Tim's photo circulating," and left him.

Burying his face in his hands a second time, Will collapsed into a chair, sweating and cold. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck." He was starting to sound like Tim. He tried to calm himself, stood again and walked to the window, opened the blinds and looked out onto the street. He took a breath, another, made the face, then he closed his eyes and crawled into the head of a serial killer.


Not a good idea, Tim thought, cheek pressed onto the floor, knife edge slicing into his shoulder blade. He hissed involuntarily, gritted his teeth as the blade cut through his shirt and into skin. He had hoped, playing dead, to get the jump on his captor when he unlocked the chain on the chair, had jumped straight up and caught the man under the chin. The two of them collapsed into the table and down onto the floor but with his hands and feet bound Tim had no chance at anything unless he knocked the man out. He'd almost knocked himself out with the force of the contact, skull to jaw. Now the Chess Master was kneeling on Tim's back and demonstrating how it was going to feel to be flayed while still conscious.

He spat blood from where he'd bit his tongue, spoke quietly. "Dr. Lecter would remove the organs of the people he despised, cut them out with a knife and make them watch. Do you think they screamed?" He bent down and said the last in Tim's ear, his breath warm.

"Probably not for very long. It likely would've degraded to moaning pretty quickly."

"You'll be screaming. They all scream."

Tim didn't doubt it. He was having trouble keeping from screaming right now and this was only a demonstration. He gasped in some breath, worked to keep his voice light, unaffected, said, "You're like Hannibal's Mini-Me, the guy in the Austin Powers movies. You ever watch them? Only you're more like a Maxi-Me. That kinda sounds like a feminine protection product, doesn't it? You're just a sad copy, a wannabe. Or, maybe you're just so dumb you don't know that skin is an organ too."

The knife paused, for a moment. Tim figured he'd just made the cut longer, taunting the man like he did, but it was worth it.


I watch my father's body floating on top of the water in the pool. I don't feel anything now that he's dead; I'm disappointed, not satisfied. There's nothing special about it. I want to try it again, do it better, perfectly.

My next victim is someone I know, someone who has humiliated me like my father did. The one after that is the dress rehearsal for the scene that I have played out in my head since watching my father bob lifeless in the yard. It's a perfect scene, and it means everything to me that it be perfect. It shows how smart I am that I capture my victims by outwitting them at chess, that I stage it so perfectly. . . I do it again and again. It satisfies. I choose the king, drown him in his arrogance; choose the loser who can't live up, bare his ignorance for the world to see. This is my design.

How dare they mimic me? It's my design. They've stolen it and I will take it back.

Will swayed slightly on his feet as he opened his eyes, put a hand out, palm flat on the cool glass of the window. "He's taking it back," he said softly, speaking to his reflection. "But he needs to take something from Hannibal to even it out." An eye for an eye? Not quite, but close. A possession, something Hannibal cherises in his own way. It was obvious when he thought about it. Will sighed, resigned. "He wants to steal me from Hannibal."

Will pulled his phone from his pocket and called Jack then he walked into the Marshals' bullpen so they could hear what he had to say. "Jack, I think he wants to use the cave again – here in Kentucky. He wants to...piss in the corners, so to speak. He's already pissed on Hannibal's first scene…now he's going to lay claim to this one, the one where Hannibal and Frederick Hayes tried to copy him…only he thinks he's going to accomplish what Hayes couldn't. He's going after me…through Tim." He pulled the phone away from his cheek and started giving orders. "We need to find any building, house, shed, cabin, anything near the caves in Carter County that has been recently leased, occupied, I don't know. He's got to be holding him here in Kentucky and he has to have a vehicle. He has to be ready."

A photo and any information gathered came through to the Lexington Bureau from Virginia – Paul Francis O'Keefe, recent address in Maryland. Will finally had a face to compare to his mind's creation. He was blonde instead of brunette, the eyes farther apart, lips fuller. He looked all-American; he played football in college, flunked out, worked for his father. There were two chessboards found in his house, and in the woods in the acreage behind, a wind chime of human skins hanging from a grove of trees.

Will had nailed the psychopath part. He covered his face a third time. "God, I hate my job."


"You don't know anything."

"Oh, I know quite a bit actually," Tim said, panting through the pain. "I got a good account of you and your kind of crazy from Will Graham." He'd been dragged back down the stairs and dumped in his cell; his back was screaming. He ignored it. "If I remember the list right, you don't like your daddy and you're a princess about it, you're a shitty chess player, you're a rich bitch and you're a bully. Did I miss anything? Hey, did you get cut from the football team? I bet you did. Was it bad marks or do you just suck at everything?"

"Will Graham isn't coming for you."

"Nope, he's not. He's too smart. He'll just send in the FBI tactical team. Point and shoot." Tim said it with confidence but the confidence was shallow, fear building just under the surface.

"It's time to change the schedule." The Chess Master spoke to himself. "It's time." He looked at his captive, a piece of dirt on the floor. "I don't like you."

Tim thought that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

The door was shut abruptly, locks slid into place, and the room was dropped back into darkness. Tim listened to the footsteps moving away and up the stairs, the front door slamming. He heard an engine turn over, sounded big, a truck maybe, then tires on gravel. So the house was out in the country, likely. He sat as comfortably as he could for a while then worked his way awkwardly to his feet and did the tour of his room again, trying not to panic.


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