Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Once, Clarice went to the office of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

It had been years since the last time she had seen him, time in which he and Will Graham had simply vanished. There had been no sightings and no leads, and the case remained open yet stagnant.

She went to the office solely because she was curious.

Crawford had given her a set of keys. She was certain he wasn’t supposed to have them. Before her time, the FBI had gotten access to Dr. Lecter’s office after the Tooth Fairy had broken in. Crawford had kept the keys in his own desk, where they’d been long forgotten by anyone else at the FBI. He had turned them over to Clarice during a conversation about his possible retirement, surprising her in both that he had them and that he thought they should be kept.

She was the obvious choice for obvious reasons. Clarice had taken them without comment, and had even considered simply disposing of them. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Dr. Lecter rarely entered her thoughts these days, though it was inevitable that she now found herself thinking of him. In the end, she simply decided to use the keys for their intended purpose. She could open a door, and then close it again.

Clarice drove to Baltimore on a sunny day. She parked on the street and walked up the sidewalk to the gate, which she had to unlock. A set of steps brought her to stand at the building’s imposing door. She stared at it before she entered, like she imagined so many others before her had done. She put the key in the lock, entering the building as Dr. Lecter had done.

There was no electricity, of course, as utilities had been shut off long ago. The waiting room was lit by one dim window, muted light shining in between the blinds. The chairs were draped in plastic, as were the pictures that still hung on the walls. She felt like she was walking through a crime scene, one that had been long abandoned.

The office proper was much the same—everything swathed in plastic, a visible layer of dust on the floor. Clarice went to the windows first, pulling the curtains back as slowly as she could in order to stir up the least amount of dust. The high windows let in what seemed like a world of light, even with the semi-sheer blinds still closed. The office was massive, and she could easily envision how elegant it would have been when it was set up. It was still set up, in a way, as nothing had been moved, but merely covered.

Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor.

There was a chaise that drew her attention, mainly because she couldn’t imagine Dr. Lecter actually doing therapy while his patient stared at the ceiling. Perhaps he’d only had it because it was a thing that amused him to possess, a thing others would expect to see in a psychiatrist’s office. It was an ornament that filled the empty space.

No, a session would have happened between the two leather chairs. Dr. Lecter would want the ability to study the person across from him, to analyze their every word and movement. Clarice circled the chairs, drawing back the covers of each one. She wondered which one Dr. Lecter would have favored. She sat down in one, testing the feel of it. This, she decided after a moment, would have been the patient’s chair. It faced the door, allowing the patient a sense of security, the ability to see the entrance to the room. The other chair would have been Dr. Lecter’s, then. Clarice moved to it, sitting down and staring at the chair across from her.

She wondered how many times Dr. Lecter had sat here and conversed with Will Graham. The echoes of conversations long past seemed as suspended in the air as the dust that caught the light.

After another moment, Clarice stood, carefully covering both chairs again. She walked the perimeter of the room. Bookcases and covered art, side tables and ornamental chairs stood shrouded, placed just as Dr. Lecter had left them. Towards the back of the room were two separate sitting areas, one in front of a fireplace, another in a corner with a table to work at. In the center of the space sat Dr. Lecter’s desk. Clarice ran her fingers over the plastic as she walked around it, but she didn’t uncover it.

She stood behind the chair and appraised the room. She was again struck by the feeling of something both preserved and forgotten. There was something haunting in walking rooms so little changed, rooms so defined by their owner.

Clarice left the desk and made her way over to the ladder that led to the second level. Her hands left prints in the dust as she ascended, and the bookcases that lined the walls above were also covered in plastic. Clarice slowly walked the length of the balcony, and then back to the center. Her position commanded an impressive view of the room. She personally would have found the ladder inconvenient for daily use of the library, but she imagined that Dr. Lecter would have liked the aesthetic of the balcony so much that it wouldn’t have bothered him.

The banister was covered in dust, and she resisted the childish urge to write her name in it. But common sense overruled her amusement, as she was technically trespassing in the building.

After making her way back to the main level, Clarice stood for a moment more, lingering in what she had come to see. Finally, she closed the curtains and crossed the room to leave. The waiting room door shut quietly as she pulled it to; the solid wood front door clanked as it closed.

Clarice locked the building and then the gate, and got into her car. She started it and began to drive, not back to Quantico, but to another address she’d never been to.

Dr. Lecter’s home sat on a road full of grand structures, all of them dignified and imposing. None more so than his house, which seemed to cast a pall over the area, despite not appearing outwardly much different from its neighbors.

Clarice parked across the street and simply looked. She understood that the interior of the house was much like the office, draped and closed up, but more or less just as he’d left it. She didn’t have a key, nor did she want one. Walking the halls of his office was one thing; being in his home would be quite another.

The house itself had become something of an urban legend. In the beginning, after Dr. Lecter’s arrests, it had attracted the curious and the crime junkies. But regular patrols down the street, plus neighbors ready to call the police on anyone loitering, had seen things more or less taper off. However, he was always a topic of interest to the public, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to still wander by.

The city had initially put up a chain link fence, which at least kept people to the sidewalk. Most of the time, anyway.

More recently, the house had drawn the attention of people young enough to not even remember when Dr. Lecter was first caught. Adventurous and impulsive, they were attracted to it partly for the shock value and partly because it was an abandoned mansion. After three of them died, the word ‘cursed’ began to appear in conjunction with mentions of the property.

Two young men had been spray painting the front door one night when someone called the police on them. They had bolted when they’d seen the police car’s lights, hopped the fence, and jumped into the car they’d been driving. Apparently afraid of pursuit, they had floored it and sped away, right through an intersection where a delivery truck struck their car and killed them both instantly.

Another man had died on the property only a few months later. He had been planning a break in, based on the tools found on his person. He had jumped the fence, landed on an unexpected patch of ice, cracked his head and broken his neck. A neighbor had seen his body the next morning.

Both were freak accidents with nothing to blame but stupidity and bad luck. But it had been years since anyone had seen Dr. Lecter, and the more outlandish corners of the Internet began to talk about the house being cursed or even haunted.

The idea was obviously ridiculous. Clarice didn’t believe in curses or ghosts, for one thing.

The other thing, of course, was that she still got Christmas cards from him.

The cards had started coming to her house, which perhaps should have worried her, but didn’t. Home addresses were easier to find than ever these days, and the change had actually coincided with a promotion she’d gotten. It had almost seemed a courtesy, that she no longer received mail from a serial killer care of the FBI.

But anyone who bothered to actually look at activity related to the house would know that he was still very much alive.

The chain link fence put up by the city had soon been replaced by a tall wrought iron one. The front door had been repainted. The yard had always been kept mowed, and tree trimmers were seen every few years. Taxes were paid annually. Dr. Lecter’s properties were maintained at the precise minimum to keep them from being seized due to fines or liens. So they stood, monuments to silent horrors, the buildings like tombstones over their streets.

Clarice imagined he kept them because his own memories there were pleasant ones. They were places that he had occupied at the height of his career and his killings, not to mention the beginning of his time with Will Graham. He would have disliked someone moving into spaces that were his and altering them, let alone making a spectacle of them. More practically, he had the financial means to keep them, no matter what his reasons.

The FBI had been able to monitor his bank account for a while. There were large payments to an attorney, who in turn was the one taking care of the property management on Dr. Lecter’s behalf, and who was on retainer if Dr. Lecter was ever apprehended again. Nothing else came in or out of the account. A significant amount had been transferred in from an offshore account years ago, seemingly for the sole purpose of conducting any business on U.S. soil Dr. Lecter needed to conduct. Offshore accounts being what they were, that was where the FBI’s attempts at tracing him had ended.

Over time, Clarice had become extremely realistic about the chances of finding Will Graham when he didn’t want to be found. Both Will and Dr. Lecter were capable of evading authorities, but something told her that Will was the one who ensured they never truly attracted attention. It had been years since she’d seriously looked for traces of either of them because she had come to the conclusion that it was a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

Clarice had been informally proactive after Crawford had given her the case, keeping an eye out for anomalies or for crimes overseas, but had seen nothing that made her suspect their involvement. She hadn’t made the mistake of pouring herself into the project like she had before; she was simply alert for anything odd. As her caseload had increased, she’d found herself with less time to devote to a case that had no movement, but it didn’t bother her the way it would have years earlier.

She had accepted the fact that nothing would happen unless it happened. She would know it when she saw it, and if it was strange enough, she would see it.

There was certainly nothing to see at the house, just as there hadn’t been at the office, but curiosity had driven her to come anyway.

After another moment, Clarice started her car and pulled away from the curb, beginning her drive back and leaving Dr. Lecter’s house behind her.

It probably would have amused him to know that she had been there, that he had occupied her thoughts so thoroughly, even if just for a short period of time. She briefly wished she could have discussed her visit with him, related her observations and seen what he would say in return. It was the first time in years she had actually wondered what it would be like to talk to him.

She and Dr. Lecter had a personal connection, but she had never been contemplative about it. After their last meeting, her understanding of herself and of him had faded to background noise in her life—always present, but not something that needed to be re-examined or dwelt on.

In truth, Clarice never expected to see him again.

Chapter Text

Clarice was a victim of her own success.

The fact that she was aware of it didn’t make it any easier to mitigate. She could hardly refuse cases, hardly stop working when results were expected. Her job had always been demanding and high pressure, and while she generally thrived on it, her own outstanding performance had become an almost impossible expectation to keep meeting.

It was currently nine in the evening, and she had just gotten home after a long day. Despite the late hour, Ardelia had offered to pick up Thai food for them both before she went home. Clarice had let her; there was nothing at her own house she felt like cooking or eating.

When the doorbell rang, Clarice let Ardelia in. She took the carryout bag from her, thanking her as she did so, and led Ardelia to the kitchen.

“It’s a mess, I know,” Clarice said as Ardelia followed her in.

“Hey, no judgment here,” Ardelia said, moving to wash her hands.

It was still a mess. There were dirty dishes in the sink, dry ingredients from the last time she had cooked strewn about the countertops, boxes of crackers and cereal that she simply hadn’t put back in the pantry, and a pile of miscellaneous non-kitchen items that had accumulated on the island. Through the doorway to the laundry room, piles of laundry, both clean and dirty, could be seen.

While Clarice in general liked her space tidy, the simple truth was that by the time she came home these days, she was too tired to deal with any of it.

Clarice cleared off space on the table by pushing the scattered papers and mail to one side. She untied the carryout bag and set the containers out, and then washed her own hands and got glasses of water for them both. Joining Ardelia at the table, Clarice opened her takeout and immediately started eating.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, before Ardelia said, “You’re running on fumes, Clarice.”

“This won’t last forever.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Dixon wants a high close rate because he wants the job for more than just the interim. There’s a good chance he’ll get it, and then the pressure will back off.”

“Or it won’t. Or they’ll hire someone else and the whole thing will start all over again,” Ardelia said, waving her fork. “The new boss will want to prove themselves.”

Crawford had retired six months ago. In the end, the work was all he’d had left, and he had continued with it long after he was eligible for retirement. When he’d finally been done, there had been a retirement party, where he’d announced he was moving to Italy to live out his golden years. Crawford had sold his house and moved almost immediately afterward. The swiftness with which it had been accomplished told Clarice that it was something he’d been planning for a good deal of time.

Within the space of a month, Crawford had removed himself entirely from their lives. It was something of an adjustment, as he had been a constant fixture of her career.

“Dixon isn’t even one of us,” Ardelia continued. “On paper, it’s a lateral move from the Justice Department, but in reality, it’s a job with a lot more prestige. Of course he wants it, even if he has no idea how our department actually works.”

“Only someone from inside the department would know how it actually works.”

“Exactly,” Ardelia said. She got straight to the point. “Have you applied for Crawford’s job?”

“No.”

“Are you going to? There’s still time.”

Clarice knew there was still time. The hiring process for high level government jobs moved incredibly slowly. Interim managers and directors until the final replacement was hired were common.

“I’m not sure I want it,” Clarice admitted.

“It’s the very best job someone in our line of work can get. Why wouldn’t you? I know you’re not afraid of the responsibility.”

Clarice sighed. “I’m a profiler. I’m good at being a profiler. It’s what I love. It’s where I—” She faltered, searching for the right words. “It’s where I shine, I suppose. I’d even say I’m excellent at it. I know Crawford’s job is a step up, but I don’t want it just because it’s a step up. My whole life, this is exactly where I dreamed of being. This is my dream job. Should I let go of it for more money, for a job I don’t know that I’d love?”

Ardelia pressed her lips together, pensive. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I just can’t imagine not wanting it.”

“Crawford’s job is essentially managerial,” Clarice said slowly. “I’ve never aspired to have a job with that description. My passion is profiling. I can’t imagine managing profilers—I’d just be itching to do the work myself.”

“I think you’d be good at it. Managing, that is.” Ardelia paused, then said, “And you certainly couldn’t be worse than Dixon. You should seriously apply.”

Clarice took a drink of water. “You’re overlooking the obvious,” she said. “I’m forty. You don’t get that job unless you’re fifty.”

“You’re also the star of the department. You’d probably have a good chance at it.”

“If you think the next director is going to be so bad, why don’t you apply for it?”

“I did,” Ardelia said.

Clarice was surprised. “Then why do you want me to apply for it?”

“Because I think you’d be better at it than me,” Ardelia said easily, not at all bothered talking about professional strengths and weaknesses. “But I think I’d be better at it than Dixon.” She continued, saying, “Oh, I know I’m not going to get it. I’m thirty-nine, which is even worse than being forty. But it will be good practice, and the candidate pool is confidential, so Dixon won’t be able to be annoyed about me applying.”

Clarice worked on the last of her food.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Nothing is going to be exactly like it was. No matter who’s hired, we’re not going to have another Crawford. And Crawford had his faults, just like anyone. It was just that we were used to them. It’s going to be different going forward, and we can’t change that.”

“Different is fine,” Ardelia said. “But you can’t keep going like this. I can’t keep going like this. I don’t think either of us have gone home before eight in the last two weeks. And I know you worked all of last weekend, and the last before that. I know you worked through Thanksgiving. None of that is sustainable. And I would prefer to have a boss who realizes that. When was the last time you took an actual day off?”

“Before Crawford retired.”

“That’s what I thought.” Ardelia paused again, then said, “I’ll say it again, and then I’ll shut up: really think about applying, won’t you?”

“I have thought about it. But fine, yes—I’ll think about it again.”

When they were both done eating, Clarice stood up and took the containers to rinse at the sink. Then she left them on the counter to dry before they went into the recycling.

She came back to the table to see Ardelia gaping at a piece of her mail. Clarice saw that she held the recent Christmas card from Dr. Lecter. The envelope had been somewhere in the pile of mail that had accumulated over the last week or so.

Ardelia had seen them before, so Clarice wasn’t sure why it was so surprising.

“Is this what I think it is?” Ardelia asked, holding the card up. “You just have this sitting here?”

Clarice shrugged. “It’s not like there’s anyone to see it. Look at it if you want.”

There was a time when she would have tucked it away immediately, worried about someone stumbling across it, but those days were long past. She’d had a few brief relationships, but they had never become serious because she put her job above everything else. Clarice had come to the conclusion that she was a workaholic. Even the vacations she took were practical, so that she could clear her head and come back fresh for work. She had briefly fretted over her total dedication to her career, but had ultimately decided that there wasn’t anything wrong as long as it was what she wanted.

“There were also those,” Clarice said, gesturing to the floral arrangement on the counter, “delivered a day or two later.” Dr. Lecter had sent three other arrangements over the years, each after she had caught a particularly high profile killer. She had been doing so much work recently that she couldn’t immediately pinpoint which case he had found notable, though it could have been several of them. There hadn’t been a separate card with the arrangement.

Ardelia glanced at the flowers before she pulled out the Christmas card from the already opened envelope and looked inside, obviously staring at the signature, before she handed it back to Clarice.

Clarice simply tossed the card back with the pile of mail. “I’ll put it away when I sort through the rest of this.”

She was struck by the thought that if a self-described workaholic was overwhelmed by their division’s new grueling pace, something was going to have to give.

But she could deal with that in the morning. “I’m exhausted,” Clarice said, almost to herself. She suddenly felt like she could fall asleep standing there.

“Ditto,” Ardelia said. “Bright and early tomorrow morning is going to come soon enough.”

They said their goodbyes and Clarice let Ardelia out.

As much as she wanted to, Clarice didn’t go straight to bed. She made a quick sandwich for lunch the next day, took a shower so she didn’t have to in the morning, and found at least half of what she was going to wear tomorrow.

She was asleep nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow.

It seemed like it was only minutes later that her alarm went off, but a quick glance at the clock showed it was indeed morning. Another glance showed that she had slept through her first alarm entirely.

Clarice bolted upright, even as she mentally congratulated herself on her recent practice of setting two alarms. She had already started setting her alarm as late as possible, which led to a hurried morning routine. This morning, it was going to have to be lightning fast.

Clarice ate a yogurt and a bagel, and gulped down a cup of orange juice, wishing she’d had time to make coffee but figuring she would get some at the office. Then she did the bare necessities in the bathroom, skipping her minimal makeup routine entirely and doing nothing with her hair, before scrambling to get dressed. She finally located a clean shirt in the laundry room, and then dashed back to her closet to grab the slacks and blazer she’d laid out.

She was just about to leave through the garage when the doorbell rang.

Through the kitchen window, Clarice could see a UPS truck. She couldn’t remember what she’d ordered, but every few days, some package or other arrived. Nearly everything non-perishable she bought these days was online, much of it set to autoship.

While she was mentally debating whether to retrieve the package from the porch or simply collect it when she got home, the doorbell rang again. Clarice cursed to herself as she turned from the door that led to the garage and went back through the house. Of course the package needed a signature.

She felt more rushed than ever as she rounded the entryway corner. But at least the driver was still waiting, silhouette visible through the beveled windows.

Clarice flipped the lock and opened the door.

Chapter Text

Ardelia didn’t immediately notice that Clarice was late.

Ardelia was at her own desk, swamped with compiling notes for her cases into a status report for Dixon. The email had been sitting in her inbox first thing; everyone in the department had gotten one. It rankled Ardelia that instead of doing actual work and making progress, she was also now doing work for the sake of appearances. Dixon seemed to want a parade of people going through his office reporting the status quo.

It was something that took up valuable time and something else that Crawford hadn’t seen the necessity of. He’d expected his people to come to him when they had something big, and to be working at all other times to get something big. No one ever went to Crawford to say that they were still in the middle of things.

Dixon, however, wanted a presentation of case summaries from every agent by the end of the day. Ardelia worked most of the morning to get hers ready. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same; no one came by her desk, and the offices were quiet.

By eleven, she was done, and she went straight to Dixon’s office to get it over with. He simply sat and listened to her, then offered nothing but bland platitudes about making more progress on cases.

As she was leaving, he commented, “You’re on top of things, though. You even beat Clarice in here.”

“Oh?” Ardelia said.

“Mm-hm. She’s usually the first to report in.”

Ardelia said something in generic agreement, made her excuses about getting back to work, and left.

She went down the hallway, not to her desk, but to Clarice’s. Clarice had been exhausted last night, but surely she had made it in to work? Ardelia had spent the morning without leaving her own desk, but the fact that Clarice hadn’t even stopped by on the way to the kitchen to get coffee—which she seemed to live on these days—made Ardelia unexpectedly uneasy.

Clarice’s desk was empty, and there was no sign that she had been there this morning.

Ardelia sat down in Clarice’s chair and fired off a quick text to her. When she didn’t get a response, she called. Ardelia waited while the phone rang. Clarice had been dead on her feet the last few days, but maybe she was worse than Ardelia had imaged.

Clarice didn’t answer.

Ardelia walked back to her own desk for her purse, her mind already made up to leave for lunch and go check on Clarice. It wasn’t like her not to turn up to work, not to answer her phone.

Ardelia wasn’t immediately jumping to any worst case scenarios, as the most likely explanation was that Clarice was asleep, sick, or had even decided to take a day off in order to keep functioning. She supposed the most likely worst case scenario—if she was going to go there—was that there had been some sort of car accident.

But Ardelia couldn’t silence the sudden, nagging voice that said the last time Clarice hadn’t shown up and couldn’t be reached, it was because something had gone incredibly wrong.

They had discussed Hannibal Lecter several times over the years. Ardelia had accepted Clarice’s stance that it was better for her to deal with Lecter alone. But she had extracted the promise that Clarice needed to tell her if she thought something was leading to Lecter, needed to tell her if there was some far-flung theory she was going to check out. Clarice had agreed.

The topic of Lecter hadn’t seriously come up in years. Clarice barely had time recently to get her work done, let alone reopen a pet project. Whatever was going on today wasn’t about Lecter. And it was probably nothing.

But the paranoia in the back of Ardelia’s mind remained.

-----

Half an hour later, Ardelia pulled into the driveway of Clarice’s house, maneuvering around a UPS truck in the road. She had repeatedly called Clarice’s number on the way over, but had never gotten an answer.

Standing at the front door, Ardelia rang the bell. After another minute, she knocked loudly and yelled at the glass, “Clarice? It’s me!”

When nothing happened, Ardelia went around back. She knocked once at the back door, but was already making her way to where Clarice had told her a key was hidden. The shrubbery was in a bed outlined with bricks. Ardelia counted to the tenth brick from the wall, and raised it up. Underneath was a key tightly wrapped in tinfoil. She shook the dirt off and removed the key.

She had never used it. She doubted Clarice had ever used it.

Ardelia opened the back door. “Clarice?” she called again.

There was no answer. There was also no countdown tone from the security system, which should have been armed.

Ardelia headed towards the garage to check for Clarice’s car. The garage was empty, as she had more than halfway expected it to be. The idea of a car accident again jumped to the front of Ardelia’s mind. She hadn’t encountered any wrecks on the highway, but an accident from this morning could have been cleaned up hours ago, Clarice taken to a hospital—

Ardelia’s train of thought screeched to a halt when she noticed Clarice’s cell phone lying on the garage floor.

There was something smaller next to it, discarded on the concrete. She moved closer to make it out.

It was Clarice’s smartwatch.

Dread settled in Ardelia’s stomach even as her training kicked into gear. She drew her weapon automatically, and a moment later, she began a systematic search of the house.

Clarice wasn’t here—no one was likely here, not now—but Ardelia began a sweep room by room. There was nothing in the laundry room, nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the office. Nothing in the living room—but just around the corner, in the front entryway, she could see part of an overturned table.

Stepping through the living room, barely breathing, Ardelia rounded the corner.

The entryway was destroyed.

The small table was tipped over, on the floor several feet away from where it had been sitting. The contents of the table, a heavy metal lamp and a few decorative knick-knacks, were strewn across the floor. Shattered glass that used to be a bowl was in gleaming shards on the tile, and there was a package on the floor. The coat rack was knocked over, the coats in a haphazard pile around it.

On the wall above it all, the words I TOOK WHAT WAS OWED were scribbled in black permanent marker.

Ardelia was stunned, and for a moment she couldn’t move at all. Then she remembered that she was making sure the house was empty. She was more certain than ever that no one was here, but she quickly went through the bedrooms and bathrooms on the other end of the hallway.

Then she holstered her gun and returned to the entryway.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt like something out of a nightmare.

None of the chaos in the entryway had been visible through the textured glass on and around the front door. The door wasn’t even locked, she noticed. She could have walked right in. It had never occurred to her to do so.

Ardelia opened the door. She realized almost immediately that she shouldn’t have. She wasn’t wearing gloves; she could have destroyed evidence. It had been automatic, opening a door she had opened hundreds of times before. But there was nothing to be done about it now besides not touch anything else.

From the doorway, the porch looked as it always had. Of course it did—she had walked right up to it minutes ago.

The UPS truck was still parked across the street.

Ardelia didn’t know quite how many minutes she had been inside, but it was strange that the truck was still there. UPS deliveries were notoriously quick; daily routes were predetermined and already mapped, and drivers had schedules to keep.

Walking out the door and down the driveway, she made her way to where the truck was parked. She looked up and down the road. There was no sign of the driver. No porch that they were on, nowhere else they could have been walking besides the three or four houses in the immediate area. Ardelia circled the truck once.

Stepping into the truck from the driver’s side, Ardelia peered into the back, her weapon held in front of her. There was nothing but packages. She stepped out again, looking around and finding no one at all.

The empty truck had been driven here by someone, and it was too much of a coincidence not to be tied to whatever had happened to Clarice.

-----

Ardelia didn’t go back to headquarters. Instead, she made a call and headquarters came to her. At least, more agents than were strictly required to process a scene came to her, and it felt like all of headquarters.

Everything seemed to happen at once, even though it took hours. Ardelia gave a detailed account of arriving at the house. Photographs of the entryway and garage were taken. Preliminary fingerprint dusting was done. Clarice’s phone and watch were bagged. Searches were started.

Ardelia moved through the house feeling lost as activity bustled around her, agents combing the house for anything out of the ordinary. As much as she tried to pretend that she could handle this like any other case, after the adrenaline of searching Clarice’s house had worn off, a steady combination of numbness and shock had been growing in her.

She kept waiting for someone to point out that she shouldn’t be here anymore, that she was too close to actually work this case. But no one did, and she couldn’t tear herself away.

Ardelia drifted out of the dining room and through the French doors to Clarice’s small office while the search was still going on in the main part of the house. She took advantage of the moment alone, gripping the back of Clarice’s desk chair and forcing herself to take a deep breath.

It was only a moment later that a sharp voice from the kitchen cut through the hum of background activity.

“Holy shit.”

At the sound of the other agent’s voice, Ardelia had one of those strange, prescient moments of startling clarity. In the space of one second, she knew exactly what had happened in the other room and what was going to happen because of it. She didn’t question the instinct that followed; she reached into Clarice’s bottom desk drawer, pulled out a small stationary box, and tucked it into her jacket.

No one noticed.

Everyone was moving toward the kitchen, curious what had been discovered.

Ardelia already knew, but went to look anyway.

The agent that had spoken held something up, his face grim. “Before Starling disappeared, she got a calling card from Hannibal fucking Lecter.”

-----

The rest of the day proceeded much in the same manner as the early afternoon had, in a peculiar kind of slow chaos.

First there was the recording from Clarice’s camera on the front porch. Dixon had raised hell and not only gotten a warrant, but had received footage from the security company within an hour of serving them. Ardelia had to give him credit for that.

The camera footage left her feeling sick, even though it was far from graphic. Just knowing that it was Clarice who had experienced it mere hours ago and was now God knows where with God knows what happening to her made Ardelia’s stomach turn.

The alarm system hadn’t gone off when Ardelia entered because it had never been set for the day. The front porch camera showed a man wearing a UPS uniform walk up to Clarice’s door with a package. The brim of his hat obscured his face from the camera in the porch corner. He rang the bell twice. When Clarice opened the door, he jammed a needle into her neck. Then he stepped forward, and they were both out of frame as they entered the house. Just before she disappeared from the shot, Clarice staggered backward.

It was presumed from the scene in the entryway that Clarice had tried to fight or get away but that she had never made it farther than the hall.

He had then apparently written his message on the wall and loaded Clarice into her own car, leaving the house without anyone seeing. No one had noticed the abandoned UPS truck sitting on the curb all morning. Clarice’s house was one house away from being at the end of a dead end street, and the few neighbors she had worked all day just as she did. No one had even been home when the FBI had initially started making door-to-door inquiries.

Dixon had also gotten a warrant for the GPS on Clarice’s car to be traced. It was found abandoned near a campground. There was preliminary evidence that suggested that Clarice had been placed in the trunk, though fiber analysis would take time. There was no blood in the trunk, no further sign of Clarice, and no other fingerprints in the car.

A search of the woods was being done, but faint tire tracks suggested that she had been transferred to another vehicle that had been left at the site, massively reducing the chances of finding her through tracing alone. Anyone camping in the park was being interviewed to see if they had noticed any cars left in that area, but even if they got a description of a vehicle, traffic cameras only did so much good when there were miles of unmonitored highway in either direction.

The actual UPS driver had eventually been located through police reports. He had been scheduled to make a pickup at a somewhat rural address. At the house, he had been struck over the head and knocked unconscious, at which point his uniform and truck had been stolen. The still unconscious driver had been later noticed by a postal worker on her route, and she had called the police. An ambulance had taken him to the hospital, where he was currently in a coma due to massive head trauma.

After another warrant, UPS had confirmed from GPS that the same truck that had been at Clarice’s had been at the location where the unconscious man had been found earlier. The address was an unoccupied house that was for sale after the elderly owner had died, though the FBI didn’t suspect any connection between the ambush of the driver and the deceased’s only family, a single woman who lived in another state, and a son who had married and moved abroad. The working theory was that the empty house had been chosen as a pickup location solely as a secluded place to accost the driver.

The FBI’s working theory, of course, was also that Hannibal Lecter was the perpetrator.

On the surface, Ardelia couldn’t fault the logic. Lecter sent correspondence to people he meant to kill, and Lecter frequently killed people he had history with. But Ardelia’s gut screamed that it was wrong.

The scene at the house was wrong. If Lecter had taken Clarice—if Lecter was going to kill Clarice—it would have been elaborate. It would have been important to him. What had happened at Clarice’s house was planned and perfectly executed, and setting aside her faith in Clarice’s reading of Lecter, Ardelia could almost see how Lecter could have done it.

But the details of the scene nagged at her. Lecter wouldn’t have used a marker to scratch a slapdash message on the wall. Nothing about it was stylish enough. There was also the fact that it was highly unlikely that Clarice wouldn’t have recognized Lecter if he’d been standing there when she’d opened her door.

As evidence was gathered throughout the afternoon, Ardelia hoped that the next discovery would point away from Lecter, would provide a clue for a different direction to look in. But nothing did. There were no fingerprints found at the scene that didn’t belong to either Clarice or Ardelia herself. Not any of Lecter’s, but also none that would point to another person being present.

She’d had to admit that the flowers had also come from Lecter, though further investigation showed that they had been purchased with a pre-paid card and ordered through a website. The name and address that had been entered for the sender were faked and were dead ends, and the IP address that had accessed the website had been routed through a proxy server.

With everything put together, it seemed entirely reasonable from the FBI’s perspective that Lecter had taken her.

No one but Ardelia knew of Clarice’s actual history with Lecter. Bits and pieces were known, as Clarice’s run ins with him were in official records, but Clarice had never publicized or spoken about her meetings with Lecter in detail, and even Crawford hadn’t known about the mail from him.

When it became clear that the focus was being narrowed to Lecter exclusively, Ardelia knew she had to head it off before it got any worse, since her suggestions of considering other suspects had been met with near silence.

She went to Dixon’s office. It was surprisingly empty.

Ardelia shut the door behind her.

Dixon looked up from the mess of papers on his desk. “Have a seat,” he said, sounding both agreeable but busy. “Have we got something new?”

“Not exactly,” Ardelia said, sitting down across from him. “But I think we’re wrong in focusing solely on Lecter.”

His brows rose. “How so? We’ve got a signed card from Lecter, and Clarice herself told you the flowers were from Lecter. She disappears days after that you don’t think it’s connected to him?”

Ardelia was conciliatory. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be looking at Lecter, but I think at this point it’s too early to rule out someone else. We should be exploring who else might have targeted her.”

Dixon brought his hands flat against the desk, smoothing the papers as if he was smoothing his thoughts, but he didn’t speak.

Ardelia continued on. “There’s also the crime scene. It doesn’t look like Lecter and it doesn’t feel like Lecter.”

“In what way?”

She resolved to stick to nothing but the facts. Arguing that Lecter wouldn’t kill Clarice was only going to bring her own judgment into question. Ardelia herself had questioned Clarice’s judgment long ago, and it had taken nearly a year for her to completely reverse her opinion and admit that as far as Lecter was concerned, Clarice had been right. But no one had that kind of time right now.

“Lecter’s crime scenes were always carefully crafted, but they were brutal,” Ardelia started. “If he had taken Clarice, we wouldn’t have a scene at her house unless it was her body. Lecter doesn’t announce that he’s taken people. He leaves their mutilated corpses to be found. Everything he does is elaborately planned.”

Dixon’s expression shifted in incredulity. “You don’t think hijacking a UPS truck so he could walk up to her house like he belonged there didn’t take planning? That leaving in her car so he wasn’t seen carrying an unconscious woman back to said truck wasn’t calculated? That having a second vehicle at a predetermined location didn’t take forethought?”

“Everything was done like clockwork,” Ardelia agreed. “But successfully taking someone is not unique to Lecter. And Lecter never would have left a message written on the wall in marker.”

“Lecter left a message in the Miriam Lass case,” Dixon said, crossing his arms. “That was also notable because Lecter deviated from his patterns with her, including kidnapping and holding her a considerable length of time. He’s deviated before.”

Ardelia struggled to recall the details of the exact case. Most of her insight about Lecter had come from discussing him with Clarice. She had studied Lecter’s case, of course, as nearly everyone had at some point. But Miriam Lass had been two decades ago, and Lecter had a high body count to keep straight.

“That note was planned, planted,” Ardelia countered, even though she couldn’t remember the exact details of the note. “It wasn’t done on the spur of the moment, and it wasn’t sloppy. This was sloppy.” She leaned forward. “Lecter thinks himself elegant, and this doesn’t have that style.”

For long moment, Dixon didn’t speak.

Finally, he said, “I appreciate your thoughts on this. But I don’t think there’s a strong enough case to be made. Everything points to Lecter, and we can’t waste manpower just because he wrote on the wall. Hell, it could have been Graham doing the actual abduction, if he’s still helping Lecter.”

“But there’s the abduction itself,” Ardelia said. “Lecter or Graham wouldn’t have been able to get the drop on her because she would have recognized them both. They couldn’t have fooled her with something like that. It had to be someone she didn’t know.”

Dixon opened his mouth to speak, but then seemed to reconsider. He looked thoughtful.

He tilted his head and opened his laptop, turning it sideways on his desk so they could both see the screen. Then he pulled up the security footage. The entire clip was ten seconds long, and the relevant part wasn’t even three. Dixon repeated it several times as they both watched.

He shook his head at her, resigned. “No. He literally injects her the second she opens the door. And the windows were beveled, so she had to open the door to see him.” He played it again. “She didn’t have time to react, even if she had recognized him in that split second. He was ready.”

Technically, he was right, Ardelia realized as she watched again and again. Of course, it wasn’t Lecter, but there was nothing in the video that would prove that.

The man had a small package in his left hand. He held it slightly in front of him as he rang the bell with his right. He obviously already had the syringe in his right hand, though it couldn’t be seen yet. Clarice opened the door, his arm came up, and the needle went into her neck. The whole thing barely took two seconds.

“The writing on the wall still doesn’t make sense,” Ardelia said again. “This isn’t Lecter.”

Dixon sighed. “Ardelia—” he started.

Ardelia could see the possibility of finding Clarice slipping away from her.

“I can work on it myself,” she said. “Even if you don’t want to waste other resources. I know there has to be something here, something that’s going to give us another lead.”

“We have a solid lead. We have evidence. We have motive.”

Ardelia shook her head. “Lecter never had a reason to kill Clarice,” she said, beginning an argument she had promised herself not to pursue. “Neither did Graham.” She had to make him see. “They had met several times, but she was never one of Lecter’s targets.”

“And you know this how?”

“Clarice told me. They have a history, but it wasn’t contentious. He’s sent her cards before,” Ardelia continued. “So the fact that she has a card now doesn’t mean anything. There’s no reason to think that he followed the card this time.”

“That doesn’t point away from Lecter being involved. Lecter has killed or tried to kill nearly everyone he had a passing connection with. Clarice obviously isn’t the exception to that.”

“But she is,” Ardelia started. “Crawford knows—”

“Crawford is gone,” Dixon snapped, his voice rising. “Crawford’s lapses in judgment are legendary. Like hell am I going to consult with Crawford! He nearly destroyed this entire department multiple times trying to catch Lecter.”

“And you’re going to destroy Clarice!”

Dixon stood up, his face red with anger.

Ardelia did the same. She knew it was over, and she knew she’d lost her temper.

“You,” he said shortly, “are on leave.”

“Sir, I apologi—”

“I’m not seeing Lecter in this because I want to,” he cut her off. “The evidence is there, and everyone in the department sees it but you.” He sighed, and his tone softened somewhat as he said, “I don’t want to see you back in this building for week. You’re too close to be working this case anyway, and we both know that.”

She had known, but it was still maddening to hear. She was too close; she couldn’t be responsible for making a call when it came down to what could be life or death decisions. But she also couldn’t imagine not being able to do anything but wait.

“Go home,” Dixon said, in what she assumed he thought was a reassuring manner. “Get some rest and leave it to us. We’ll find Clarice.”

Not trusting herself to speak, Ardelia simply nodded and left the room.

-----

They wouldn’t find her. Not when they were all looking in the wrong direction.

Ardelia had immediately gone home and opened her laptop. Even if she couldn’t be on the case, she could still see what was being done. Maybe she would be able to see some new piece of evidence differently, figure something out or find a new lead.

However, when she tried to connect to the FBI servers, Ardelia found that her login credentials had been suspended. She honestly hadn’t figured Dixon would think that far ahead. After a minute of sheer frustration, Ardelia shut the laptop, somehow managing not to slam it the way she wanted to.

Her eyes drifted towards her purse. Inside was the stationary box she had taken from Clarice’s desk.

It contained every piece of mail Clarice had ever received from Hannibal Lecter.

The moment that the card on Clarice’s kitchen table had been discovered, Ardelia had known that one card was going to be bad enough, but a box of them would be too much to ignore. So she had taken them, tampering with the crime scene and committing a felony.

She felt bad that she didn’t feel bad.

But her actions hadn’t mattered at all, since the case was currently playing out worse than she could have imagined, even without the other cards being discovered. She had brought them up to Dixon as a last ditch effort, but she wasn’t going to admit to having taken anything from the crime scene—Clarice’s house was a crime scene—unless she knew it was going to make things better, not worse.

The FBI already thought Lecter had done it; the cards would be a literal pile of evidence.

Ardelia stood and walked across the room to her purse. Maybe she could find something that Lecter had written at some point, something that was the opposite of whatever you wrote to people you intended to kill. It was a long shot, but she had been completely shut out of the investigation, and she couldn’t stand doing nothing to help Clarice.

Ardelia sat down at her kitchen table with the stationary box.

She knew more or less what was inside, though it still felt like an invasion of privacy to go through it. But if she could find anything that would make Dixon see that Hannibal Lecter wasn’t part of this, it didn’t matter. Clarice could be mad at her later, when she came back alive.

Ardelia took the lid off the box. She pulled out the stack of paper within and loosely spread it across the table.

Some of it she had seen and some of it she hadn’t. Clarice had opened the box several times when the topic of Lecter had come up, but it wasn’t as if she had shown Ardelia every time she received something in the mail, nor had Ardelia expected her to.

As it was, there were almost two dozen envelopes. Ardelia slowly began opening them. The majority by far were Christmas cards. Most contained nothing but Hannibal Lecter’s signature, though one notable exception also contained Will Graham’s signature. A few cards had a handwritten line inside in Lecter’s fine calligraphy wishing Clarice well, but it was the sort of platitudes that anyone might put on a Christmas card. Ardelia noticed that the year each card had been received was written in Clarice’s precise handwriting on the inside of the envelope.

There were then three small cards that had obviously come with floral arrangements. Being sent through a delivery service, they were not signed by Lecter, but had generic messages of congratulations on them. Clarice had obviously guessed what they were for and who they were from, because she had marked the date on them as well, and because they wouldn’t have been in the box otherwise. Inside the box was also the note that Clarice had received upon her graduation from the Academy, and the card and necklace that had arrived after her encounter in Minnesota. Ardelia had seen both before, but she read them again. The necklace itself was in a small thin box that she set to the side.

The next envelope looked like it was another Christmas card, but instead contained a plain card with a seemingly random note written inside.

Clarice,

Some recent bad luck in Baltimore has captured my attention. One hardly expects to find one’s name in the news regarding accidental deaths a continent away, and the referenced events amused me greatly. I’m flattered to be ascribed such omnipotence, though I can hardly claim to have as far-reaching an arm as that of God. I am once again put in mind of church collapses, a topic we never discussed, but which I have always found highly entertaining.

All the best,

Hannibal Lecter

Ardelia couldn’t make heads or tails of it, though she assumed Clarice had been able to. It confirmed that Lecter and Graham weren’t in North America, but that was practically a given at this point.

The only remaining envelope from the pile was the largest, though it was still a standard greeting card size. When Ardelia opened it, her breath caught. Tucked inside on fine paper was a drawing of Clarice. As she moved it, Ardelia realized another drawing lay beneath it, a layer of semi-translucent paper between them. Both were of Clarice, but they were as different as night and day. In the first, she was seated at a table, the details of which faded around the edges, as all the focus of the picture was on Clarice. Her lips were pressed together, and her expression seemed particularly poised, like she was considering what to say next. Everything about her was perfectly rendered, and the level of detail was extraordinary—Ardelia could see the stress in her shoulders, the tightness around her eyes. It took Ardelia another beat to realize that Lecter had drawn this from memory, and that this exact instant had probably actually happened.

The drawing underneath showed Clarice at the same table, and wearing the same clothing. This time, she was leaning forward slightly, and while she didn’t look precisely relaxed, there was nothing present of the tension from the previous picture. There was a difference, Ardelia decided, between relaxed and at ease, and Clarice looked at ease here. Her expression was almost neutral, but for the slight upward turn of her open mouth, and she was obviously speaking. Even on paper, her eyes were sharp and bright, and Ardelia herself had seen that exact cast to them when Clarice was talking about profiling. She was again astounded at the detail and at how much of Clarice was captured on the page. Ardelia could only assume that this was another moment that had in fact occurred.

She laid the two drawings carefully on the table, and turned her attention to the card they had been in. It was not a Christmas card, and there was a handwritten message that took up the entirety of one side.

Clarice,

It is seven years to the day since last we spoke, and I find myself reminiscing over our conversations. Perhaps seven is not a traditional number of importance while marking the passage of years, but the number has had significance in cultures across the globe since ancient times. I myself find it has curious consequence. I first made your acquaintance seven years after meeting Will, and through your fortuitous interference, I have now spent twice that span of time with him by my side. Perhaps fate will be tempted once more, and this is the year we will again converse. I wonder at what such a conversation could bring, and what new understanding it could expose.

I trust you will forgive the liberty of the enclosed sketches. Drawing is as much an exercise in memory as an exercise in dexterity; as your words echoed in my mind, my pencil committed them to paper. I find the results to be an inadvertent study of contrasts. Understanding is a remarkable thing; it both informs who we are and how we relate to others. With such a marked change produced from one conversation to the next, you can hardly fault me for desiring another. I endeavor always to move forward, because the past, while pleasurable, can bring no new experiences. While the future is an uncertain thing, one never knows what may yet be.

Yours sincerely,

Hannibal Lecter

Ardelia laid the card down, feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic. Even though the message was quite formal, it seemed intensely personal. It was an odd contradiction but she didn’t know how else to describe it. The drawings themselves were Clarice through Lecter’s eyes, snapshots of a memory. Even though Ardelia had heard all about the night at the cabin, Clarice had never shown her this piece of mail. But she found she could hardly blame her; none of this was something she was meant to see.

She knew that Lecter and Clarice had not ended up crossing paths three years ago, no matter what stock Lecter put in coincidence and fate. But the fact that he had put so much thought into the possibility of seeing Clarice again left Ardelia off balance.

She put the card on the table with the others. Finally, she took the necklace out of its box, staring at the pendant for a moment before she twisted it absently between her fingers. Everything inside the stationary box had been opened.

Ardelia surveyed the array of papers spread before her, and was unsettled in a way she hadn’t expected.

Clarice had nearly fifteen years of correspondence from a serial killer.

Ardelia had known, of course, but seeing it all at once was staggering. The cards, the flowers, the jewelry—Christ, the drawings—it looked like obsession.

The obsession of a psychopath.

For one terrible moment Ardelia wondered if everyone else was right, if she was blind to what was actually happening.

But then her conviction returned in full force, answering the question. She trusted Clarice. She trusted Clarice not to be wrong, and especially not to be wrong about this.

She trusted her own, original sense that said that if Lecter were going to kill Clarice, it would have to be perfect, a masterpiece in his eyes. If anything, the amount of thought and personal interest demonstrated in the years of cards supported that gut instinct. If he had done it, Lecter would have arranged everything to the finest detail. He would have put just as much thought into the presentation as he would into the process of taking her. For him they would be one and the same.

But whatever proof Ardelia had hoped to find certainly wasn’t here.

Lecter’s long-term interest in Clarice would be taken as all the more motive for her disappearance. The things he wrote weren’t threatening, but neither were they reassuring. There were too many interpretations possible and nothing was directly stated at face value.

Ardelia closed her hand around the necklace, staring blankly at the cards before her. None of them helped her, and none of them would help Clarice. She didn’t know how to reconcile that with the desperate hope she’d had that something here would change everything.

She didn’t realize she was close to tears until her gaze went unfocused and everything started to blur together.

“Goddammit!” she yelled, frustration making her voice crack.

Ardelia resisted the urge to sweep the table clear, to pound her hands against it and scream. Instead, she brought her fists to her forehead and leaned on her elbows, squeezing her eyes shut.

The contents of the stationary box were damning. There was nothing that she could take to Dixon, nothing that wouldn’t add fuel to the already raging fire.

After another minute and several excruciatingly long breaths, Ardelia opened her eyes.

Her left hand was still clenched around Clarice’s necklace. Ardelia let go in defeat, dropping the necklace to the polished wood of the table. The pendant clinked as it fell; the chain followed with a sinuous rattle.

The shape of a bird was left imprinted into her palm. She stared at it, and a terrible, treacherous thought slid into her head.

There was one person who would believe that Hannibal Lecter hadn’t taken Clarice, and that was Hannibal Lecter.