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silverusagi
Word Count: 7000
Genre: Gen, outsider POV
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Lots of blood
A/N: My fic for the Radiance Anthology for Hannibal fandom, the theme of which was 'perspectives on Will's becoming.' We've been given the freedom to post now since most of the books have arrived and the PDF has gone out, and I figured I'd go ahead and do so here on LJ/DW, even if I might wait a bit on AO3. Beta'd by verdant_fire.
Summary: An unexpected encounter between a victim and a murderer. A study of how Will is totally changed, yet exactly the same.
Her breath caught in her throat as she asked, “Are you a serial killer?”
“By definition.” He was entirely relaxed, as if he didn’t find anything about this situation unusual.
“What other way is there?”
One corner of his mouth turned up as he gave a barely perceptible shrug. “That’s for the psychiatrists to sort out, I suppose.”
----------
With One Hand (and with the Other)
She had been locked in the cabinet for three days. The passage of time was easy to mark. Her captor—he wanted her to call him Joe—was regular with breakfast and dinner, though irregular with everything else. Sometimes he played at being friendly, while other times his enjoyment at having power over her was obvious. It had always been clear that he intended to kill her.
Her kidnapping had happened on a lonely road in broad daylight when a pickup had skidded to a stop next to where she was walking. The struggle that had ensued was a blur; she had screamed and fought the man, but he had thrown her in the bed of his truck, slammed the cover shut, and sped off. Her destination had been a rickety house, the one-room basement of which she had been hauled into despite her efforts. She had pleaded and cried every step of the way, but she’d ended up shoved into a reinforced metal tool cabinet with her hands tied behind her nevertheless.
She was alone most of the time, though he came and went throughout the day, “visiting” to carry on one-sided conversations with her, as well as taking her out of the cabinet to eat and go to the bathroom. The first time she had been taken upstairs, she had tried to get away. But she couldn’t so much as open a door by herself, and there had been no one to hear her scream as he’d dragged her back down the basement stairs and locked her up. Something had broken in her after that, and she’d disengaged, retreating into herself and only acknowledging him when she had to. Sometimes she wondered if anyone even knew she was missing. She had arrived at the campus dorms on the early move-in date, and none of her friends had been there yet. It hadn’t seemed strange to go on a walk by herself; she had done it last year all the time. That seemed a world away now.
It was nearing late evening, as best she could guess. She had been left alone for longer than usual, and while she distantly wondered about not being fed, more pressing at the moment was the fact that she had needed to pee for hours and was growing increasingly desperate for a trip to the bathroom.
When the basement door finally opened and he came down the stairs, he didn’t immediately let her out. Instead, she heard him moving around the basement, almost haphazardly digging through the junk and tools that had once made this a proper workshop. His footsteps stopped in front of her, and then he was sliding the bolt of the cabinet.
One door opened first, as it always did, and she glanced up. A dark-haired man she’d never seen before was staring down at her, shock clear on his face. But the frantic hope that leapt in her chest was short-lived. He was covered in blood and had a folding knife in his hand, the blade still wet.
She pressed backwards in panic, as if she had any real room to move, as if she could actually get away from him. He followed the movement, bending down to her level as his expression shifted to something gentler. He closed the knife, but that only drew her attention to it once more. The leather gloves he wore were slick with blood, and she couldn’t imagine that he had done anything other than just murder someone. There was only one person here besides her for him to have murdered. Now there was just her.
At that moment, the top step creaked as someone else paused on it. The man in front of her stood in one smooth motion, turning to the side as he looked up.
“Did you find a saw?” asked a voice from above, an accent in it she couldn’t quite place.
“Not yet.”
She couldn’t see the man at the top of the stairs, but he could obviously see some part of her.
“But you found something else, I see,” he said. After another beat, he asked, “Dead or alive?”
“Alive.”
“Is that an answer or a recommendation?”
“It’s the outcome that’s going to occur.” His voice was soft, but there was a note of something unyielding there. His face was in profile as he looked up at the other man; a faded scar crossed his cheek, and she saw a tic in his jaw as the silence continued.
She slowly realized the conversation was about killing her, as well as the fact that the man whose shirt was drenched in blood wasn’t planning on it. She focused on him in desperation, even though nothing about him made sense.
“It would be simpler to dispose of her,” the man on the stairs said. His tone was casual, like he wasn’t really arguing a point but was exploring options.
The man in front of her chuckled. “It would be simpler not to do this to begin with. Simplicity has never featured with us.”
There was a pause before the other spoke again. “We must all be true to our natures. Who am I to deny you yours? Though I am intrigued—collateral damage has been acceptable to you in some instances.”
The man’s grip on the cabinet door shifted. His eyes flickered in her direction, before he stared blankly at the room. “A teenage girl is never going to be acceptable as my collateral damage.”
There was a measured silence.
“Then you must arrange things to your satisfaction,” the second man said, apparently agreeable. “You will not mind if I finish the work on Mr. Brandon?”
“Not at all.”
He moved away from her then, steps echoing across the floor. She heard the clanking sounds of metal as he again rummaged through the things that were scattered across the worktops. Apparently finding what he needed, he walked towards the stairs to hand it to the other man.
“Thank you,” the second man said. The top step creaked once more, before his footsteps faded back into the house above.
A moment later, the man who had found her approached again. He opened the doors fully and crouched in front of the cabinet, keeping his movements slow.
He met her eyes, expression earnest. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Joe had said that, too, all the time: “Be good and I won’t hurt you,” or “I’m not gonna hurt you, girl.” But even at the time, she could tell the words were hollow, repeated in a half-hearted effort to convince her she wasn’t going to die here. He had never meant them.
The man in front of her did. She could hear the difference in his voice, see it in his face. It seemed in complete opposition to everything else about him; he was clearly a killer, blood still on his hands. She didn’t know why he didn’t want to kill her as well, only that she had heard him disagree with the man who had. Part of her knew she still shouldn’t trust anything he said—the other part didn’t care, if only he would get her out of here.
“Is he dead?” she asked, speaking for the first time. “Did you kill him?”
“I did,” he said softly.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t already guessed that, but his easy admission of murder sent a chill down her spine. At the same time, she couldn’t suppress the relief she felt at the confirmation. The dread that had been pressing down on her for days seemed to lift, even if there was still a man between her and her ability to leave this house.
He hadn’t moved at all, and he was nothing but calm as he watched her.
She studied his face, surprised at how easy it was to meet his eyes. “Are you going to let me go?”
“I’m going to leave you just as you are for the police to find tomorrow.”
“Will they be here?”
His lips twitched, like he was privately amused. “I imagine so. There’s something of a spectacle in the front yard.”
She closed her eyes for a moment; the relief flooding her was almost a tangible thing. She was actually going to be leaving this place. More than anything, she wanted to be gone this instant, but the fact that her life wasn’t going to end here gave her the strength to keep from screaming and begging to be let out now.
Though she wasn’t above begging, and there was something else she needed, something he might permit.
When she opened her eyes, he was still looking at her with a quiet intensity.
Gathering her courage, she asked, “Can I pee? Please?”
He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise his face didn’t change.
“I’m not stupid,” she continued shakily. “I’m not going to try anything. I just really, really need to pee. Please, I can’t make it until tomorrow.”
There was a long silence, but he didn’t immediately say no. Then he exhaled, the leather on his gloves squeaking as he shifted his weight.
“After you’re done, you’re going to get back in the cabinet,” he said. He raised his brows to emphasize the point.
“Yes,” she agreed. If only she could use the bathroom, she wouldn’t fight him about being locked up again. This was suddenly so close to being over. All she had to do was do what he said and she could go back to her life.
He nodded, then stood.
It took a moment of him staring down at her for her to realize that he was waiting for her to get out. Joe had always yanked her up by the arm when he’d wanted her out. Her hands were still tied behind her, but with some effort, she braced her back against one side of the cabinet and managed to get her feet under her. After another moment, she pushed her weight away from the cabinet wall and got her balance.
She was abruptly self-conscious as she stepped out, no longer curled up and starkly aware that she wasn’t wearing anything but a blue cami and a pair of panties. His eyes briefly ran over her, but there wasn’t any interest, any intent—there wasn’t anything. His gaze was detached; he was both looking at her and looking past her, like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.
“He fed you,” he commented, more to himself than to her.
“I could eat, as long as he actually fed it to me. He didn’t untie me.” She had tried not eating at first, but hunger had soon won out, and only her dignity had suffered in eating takeout fed to her forkful by forkful.
He tilted his head. “He hadn’t assaulted you yet.”
The words came out of nowhere, but they hit her like a punch to the gut. “No,” she breathed. “He—he was drawing it out, I think. He liked to see me, wanted me to know he was looking. He took my shirt and jeans the first day. He looked at me like—like… the way men look at you sometimes,” she said, dropping her gaze. “I knew it was coming.” Then she glanced back at him. “How did you?”
“In crimes like this, a sexual component isn’t uncommon,” he said, sounding disturbingly like one of her professors. “But I also know what he did to the others.”
“There were others?”
“Two. The police haven’t connected them yet, but they will.” He regarded her evenly. “Three would have classified him as a serial killer.”
She would have classified him as a serial killer, he meant. She looked briefly at the tool cabinet, wondering about the other two girls. Had they died in this room, or somewhere else in the house? She repressed a shudder.
If not for the man standing in front of her, she would have shared their fate. The man with sincerity in his eyes and blood spatter on his face. The man who was altogether too comfortable with being soaked in another man’s blood for this to be anything like the first time he had done this.
Her breath caught in her throat as she asked, “Are you a serial killer?”
“By definition.” He was entirely relaxed, as if he didn’t find anything about this situation unusual.
“What other way is there?”
One corner of his mouth turned up as he gave a barely perceptible shrug. “That’s for the psychiatrists to sort out, I suppose.”
She swallowed at the confirmation that she was actually standing here with a serial killer. It was a strange sensation, all the stranger for the fact that he wasn’t making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, wasn’t setting off that inner alarm of danger. Maybe after three days of fear and misery, she was just too drained to be afraid of someone who had already vetoed killing her. She’d thought for days that she was going to die here, and now she wasn’t. That was all that mattered.
When she didn’t speak again, he said, “I’ll take you to the bathroom.”
It wasn’t until he’d spoken that she fully realized that going to the bathroom meant going upstairs, even though she knew the bathroom was upstairs. She looked upwards; the basement door still stood open. It seemed ominous, a gaping emptiness. She didn’t see the door and imagine freedom just beyond it; she imagined the man who had suggested disposing of her as casually as other people talked about the weather. He was somewhere on the main level of the house. The compulsion not to be anywhere near him was so overpowering it was visceral.
She glanced at the floor, shaking her head to herself. “Never mind. I’ll—I’ll just go in the corner if you’ll turn around.”
His brow furrowed, but only for a second, as he almost instantly grasped the reason for her abrupt change of track.
“Look at me,” he said, bending his neck to catch her gaze. His expression was smooth but solemn as he continued. “I’m going to take you upstairs, you’re going to pee, and I’m going to bring you right back. Then you’re going to get in the cabinet, and my friend and I are going to leave.”
He didn’t mention her fears at all, didn’t dismiss them or validate them. He simply told her what was going to happen, what he was going to do. She could hear the same steel in his voice that had been there when he’d informed his friend that she would remain alive.
“Okay,” she finally said. He hadn’t let the other man kill her here; he wouldn’t let the other man kill her upstairs. She would get through this.
He turned, gesturing toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
He made her go first. She took the steps at a slow but steady pace, with him keeping close behind her. When they were near the top, almost as an afterthought, he added, “You’re going to see blood.”
She nodded, unable to do anything else at that point besides keep going. Standing up had only made her realize exactly how painfully she needed to pee, and she would much rather do it in a toilet and without an audience, even if that did mean seeing more blood. There had to be blood in the house, given what he looked like. When she came to the doorway, she stepped into the hall, relieved to find it empty with no sign of the other man.
But even though she was prepared, she froze as soon as she saw the blood. There were several bloodstains on the carpet near her, as well as scattered drops on the walls. Farther down the hall there was a massive stain. It stretched across the entire width of the hallway and had drag marks trailing in the direction of the front door. There were handprints halfway up the walls and blood spray higher than that.
It looked like something out of a horror movie, only it was sickeningly real. She was aware that she wasn’t moving, was aware that the man at her back was the one who had done this, the one who had created such carnage. That he had done it to someone who had been planning to kill her didn’t make the scene any less gruesome or any easier to see. But she couldn’t bear to turn around, so she steeled herself and pressed forward, gingerly picking her way around the stains, not wanting her bare feet to touch any of them. The bathroom was only two doors away; she wouldn’t have to go through the large stain. She couldn’t go through the large stain.
When she reached the bathroom, he closed the door behind her, leaving her alone. She did her business quickly, having already figured out a technique for pulling down her panties with her hands behind her back. She had become sadly practiced in the routine of using the restroom while a man stood outside, though it was a relief not to have the ever-present anxiety that this would be the time he’d decide to walk in before she was finished.
Once she was done, she tapped on the door with her foot, and said, “Okay.”
The door opened, and he looked at her squarely. “Do you want a drink of water?”
She was surprised, but immediately said, “Yes.” Her thirst seemed all the more pronounced at the suggestion of a drink.
He stepped halfway into the room, reaching for one of the Dixie cups stacked on the counter. Blood smeared on it as he picked it up, though he was careful to keep his fingers away from the rim. She watched blankly as his gloves left blood on the faucet. Her gaze drifted to the blood on the doorknob, and the blood on the light switch, which she didn’t even remember him flipping on for her.
There was blood on everything he touched. She noticed very suddenly that he hadn’t touched her once.
He held the cup to her lips, and she started sipping at it. The bathroom door was open behind him, and she could see into the hallway, could see one of the handprints on the wall. She again had the thought that nothing about him fit. He stood patiently tipping the cup for her as she drank, feet from where he had brutally murdered a man.
When she drained the cup, he refilled it and brought it to her mouth once more. She finished it more slowly than the first one, but shook her head at his offer of a third, not wanting to drink any more than she’d be able to hold until morning. He threw the cup in the trash, and then moved out of the room, waiting for her. She stepped out in front of him and began the short walk down the hall.
She was prepared for the blood this time, prepared to ignore it and step around it. What she wasn’t prepared for was to see movement in the kitchen, which was straight at the end of the hall, feet away from the basement door. The other man was there, his back to her as he did something at the counter with a knife. Sheer panic consumed her from one breath to the next. Her knees seemed to lock of their own accord, even as she desperately wanted to keep moving. Something instinctive was screaming at her, a terror that froze her in place as it steadily clawed its way up her throat.
A bare hand closed around her upper arm, jolting her out of her stupor. Then she was moving, propelled forward from behind as he steered her toward the stairs. It was the only thing that kept her putting one foot in front of the other, each step bringing her closer to the basement, but also closer to the man in the kitchen. Seconds seemed to pass in slow motion and everything was heightened—the solid grip on her arm, fingers firmly but not painfully pressing into her skin; the blood on the carpet that she still managed to step around; and the man ahead of her, steadily cutting something she couldn’t see with a knife, his sleeves stained red, his shoulders flexing slightly as he worked.
The second her foot touched the first wooden step, relief washed over her, so sudden that she was dizzy from it. He kept his hold on her as they descended, and she felt like she couldn’t get to the bottom fast enough. Once they were off the stairs, he released her.
“Thank you,” she blurted, not even sure which part she was thanking him for.
She saw that he was holding his bloody glove in his other hand. He began tugging it back on.
“I’ve seen your face,” she said. “Why do you even care about fingerprints?”
“My figurative fingerprints are spread here in abundance. That’s no reason to leave my literal ones as well.”
He then gave her a pointed glance, looking back and forth between her and the cabinet.
Uncaring how pathetic it sounded, she said, “Why can’t you leave me tied up somewhere else?” It was the least she could ask for. She knew he wouldn’t let her go; he wouldn’t want the police here until he was well away. “Please, everything hurts when I’m in there.”
To her surprise, he didn’t immediately insist on her compliance. Instead, he surveyed the basement, contemplating the tools and debris that littered every surface. Then his eyes landed back on her and he shook his head.
“I know you can’t get free in the cabinet. I don’t have the time to guarantee that would be the case elsewhere.”
She nodded in acceptance and began walking toward the cabinet. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but she could endure it for a few more hours.
He followed behind her at an unhurried pace.
Biting her lip, she ducked her head and stepped in, managing to curl up at the bottom in a position that wasn’t entirely horrible. It was much easier when she hadn’t been forced inside, though there was still no room to shift once she was seated.
He crouched in front of her once more, his gaze even. “No one’s going to question that you’re a victim. But there are going to be plenty of questions, given what’s going to be found upstairs.”
She realized he meant that she was going to be the only person alive in a house where someone had been murdered, and that the circumstances were more than unusual.
“Are you telling me not to answer them?” she asked.
“I’m telling you that until certain people become involved, what happened here won’t sound credible.”
She supposed that might be true. She had been saved by a serial killer—she barely believed her.
He was still watching her, his expression entirely impassive. She stared back, searching his face for anything that made sense.
“Why did you kill him?”
His lips quirked. “Because I wanted to,” he said simply.
Then he shut the cabinet door.
The sound of the latch being bolted followed. A moment later, she heard his footsteps cross the concrete floor and recede up the stairs. He didn’t close the basement door, but there were no further sounds from above. After several minutes had passed, the silence settled over her like a blanket, and she knew she was alone.
She found a curious sort of calm in the knowledge. The house was empty and there was no one left to hurt her. She was restrained and uncomfortable, but that seemed minor in light of everything else. There was no fear in her mind of not being found. She had seen the bloodbath in the hallway, she knew the body was in the front yard, and she knew a saw had been involved. It really wasn’t a question of if the police would come, but only how long after sunrise it would take.
Even though she was no longer on edge and her captor was dead and gone, the last few days had taken their toll on her, and eventually she succumbed to an exhausted sleep. She woke feeling as rested as was possible under the circumstances, her arms beyond sore and a crick in her neck. The house was still silent.
Hours later, that changed when she heard the unquestionable sounds of the house being entered and searched as the police surged through it. She moved her leg, banging her knee against the metal doors and furiously rattling them. Moments later, she was rewarded by a heavy tread quickly descending the wooden steps and crossing the floor.
“I’m in here!” she called.
There was the noise of hands fumbling outside, unlocking the latch. Then the doors were yanked open. The man on the other side was her father’s age, with a weathered face but kind eyes. He wasn’t in uniform, but there was a shiny badge hanging around his neck.
“I’m Detective Riggs,” he said, quickly appraising her. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Amy. Amy Waters.”
Recognition flashed across his face; she must have been reported missing. “All right, Amy. I’m going to help you out, all right?”
She nodded. He reached for her, hooking his hands under her arms and pulling her up, being careful not to bang her head on the top of the cabinet. “Thank you,” she said, when she got her feet under her and was able to stand. She turned to the side, showing him her zip-tied hands. “Can you get these off?”
“I can do that.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small knife. “I need you to hold still for me.”
Amy nodded again.
“Everything’s going to be fine now, Amy,” he said, sliding the knife under the zip tie. “You’re going to be just fine.”
The tie snapped. “I know,” she said calmly, slowly moving her stiff arms. “He’s dead.”
Even as she spoke, she felt like she wasn’t acting right, though she knew there was no correct way to act. But she couldn’t help the strange way that all of her anxiety had disappeared somewhere during her conversation with the serial killer.
Detective Riggs looked at her with curiosity, though not suspicion, as she turned to face him again, still shaking out her arms. “How do you know that?” he asked.
Amy took a breath. “Well, you’re the second person to rescue me.”
-----
Things were hectic after that. She was looked over and questioned about potential injuries by first responders, but when she was pronounced to have nothing more than a few bruises on her arms, she was taken to the police station instead of the hospital. Someone produced a set of sweats for her to wear at the station, and she shared a tearful phone call with her parents, who were coming immediately to get her, but who lived over an hour away. She had already been told by Detective Riggs that she had been reported missing by her mother, who, after not receiving replies from her for two days, had accessed the GPS on her phone. Her mother had made frantic calls after that, and local police had found her phone and purse in the underbrush by the side of the road and started an investigation.
After the phone call, Riggs returned to his office with a younger woman who introduced herself as Detective Navarro. He took a seat behind the desk, while Navarro smiled and sat down in the chair next to her. They asked if she wanted to wait to talk until her parents arrived, but Amy didn’t have a problem with talking. She told them about being taken, about her days being held, and about the man who had found her.
It was only at this part that the nature of Detective Riggs’s questions began to change. “This man told you he was a serial killer?”
“Yes.” She paused. “I asked.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Seems like an odd conversation to have.”
“It just… sort of happened.”
“Given the skill of the mutilation on the body, we have every reason to believe he was a serial killer. I’m more interested in the fact that he left a witness alive to identify him.”
“He acted like it didn’t matter if he was identified. But—that wasn’t why he left me,” she continued haltingly. Amy still had no idea exactly why he hadn’t killed her, only that it had been a reason all his own. She remembered the surprise on his face when he’d opened the cabinet, remembered how quickly it had turned to concern. “He decided I wasn’t going to die the second he saw me, I think.”
Detective Riggs exhaled and reviewed what he had written on his pad, before looking back at her. “Did he give any indication why he wanted to kill Joe Brandon?”
“No,” she said. “He—he was just so calm about everything. Like he’d done it all before.”
He nodded absently, making another note. “I’m going to get a sketch artist in here while things are fresh in your mind. But is there anything else you can tell me about the man he was with? You heard them talking but you never saw him?”
“Not really. I saw him in the kitchen from behind. He was cutting something up.”
Detective Navarro straightened in her chair. “What?”
“He was at the kitchen counter with a knife.”
“And you said he had an accent earlier,” Navarro said, almost to herself. “It all clicked when you said kitchen.” She turned to Amy. “Was the man you spoke to around forty-five, with a scar on his forehead and another on his cheek?”
“He had one on his cheek, but I couldn’t see his forehead,” Amy said. “His hair was in the way. It was dark and kind of curly,” she added, wanting to help. “And he was about that old, I guess.”
Navarro stood at once and went to say something in Detective Riggs’s ear. His brows raised and he gaped at her, incredulous. “Two killers,” she said in a low voice. “Skilled mutilation, possible organ removal, and the description fits.”
“Christ,” he muttered. Then he made a vague gesture. “Go ahead.”
Detective Navarro pulled out her phone and typed something in, and then moved around the desk to show Amy. On the screen was the face of the serial killer, pictured on a simple Google Image search. “Is this him?”
“Yes,” Amy said. There was no question about it. “Who is he?”
“That’s Will Graham,” Riggs said, resigned.
“Will Graham,” she repeated, wondering why that sounded familiar. “He was… he was the one who was with… Hannibal Lecter.” The name fell from her lips slowly as her blood ran cold. Hannibal Lecter was practically an urban legend, only he was chillingly real. And she had come within a hair’s breadth of meeting him. Hannibal Lecter had been the man in the kitchen. She had been in a house with Hannibal Lecter, had been feet away from Hannibal Lecter as she’d stumbled down the hall.
But thinking of the hallway made her think of Will Graham. Even behind her, he had still been between them.
“You know who they are, then?” Detective Riggs said.
“Yes.” Hannibal Lecter’s trial and later escape had been impossible not to hear about; it had been an ever-present story for months at a time when she’d been in high school. “I know the names. I might have recognized Hannibal Lecter, but I’m not sure. But I never thought Will Graham looked familiar at all.”
Riggs nodded and tossed his pen down with an air of finality. “We’re gonna have to call the Feds on this one.”
-----
The detectives took her statements fully, though Riggs told her it was likely that someone from the FBI would be contacting her later. Her parents arrived during all this, and after their initial relief and happiness, were horrified to hear what had happened to her. Amy found herself in the peculiar position of reassuring them that she was more or less fine. A small part of her brain wondered if she was just in shock, but she really did feel fine. It was over with, and it was never going to happen again.
She went home with her parents after everything at the station was finished. Over the weekend, she would be going back to campus, just in time to get settled for her classes on Monday. But that night, she slept in her old bed, and was surprised but pleased when her sleep was dreamless.
The next morning, they were contacted by a Jack Crawford from the FBI, who had flown in to see the crime scene. He came to her house in the afternoon; Amy sat alone in the formal living room with him, her mother closing the French doors behind her after Amy said she didn’t mind talking to him by herself.
Jack Crawford regarded her for a moment before he spoke. “I want to apologize for the ambush, but I wanted to speak to you while events were recent.”
“It’s fine. I’d rather get it all done before school.”
He nodded. “The details of the case are being investigated. We’re looking for Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, of course, but a thorough DNA search of Joe Brandon’s house is also being done. If Will said there were two more girls, then there were two more girls, and we need to connect them to open cases or missing persons so their families can have closure. But none of that is what I want to talk to you about. I don’t have any more questions about the particulars—the local police were very thorough and you were very detailed. I don’t think there’s anything you can give us to help with the investigation that you haven’t already.”
That surprised her, as she’d assumed she would be going over the same things she had yesterday with the police. “Then what are you here for?”
“I wanted to talk about Will Graham.” He paused. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re not just some FBI agent,” she said. “You’re the head of something.”
“I head the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I also knew Will, personally. Before he disappeared with Hannibal.”
Her eyes widened, even as she wondered if that was why he looked so weary. “So… what do you want me to tell you?” she asked.
“Anything you want to say.” Crawford brought his hands together. “I want to know what you thought about him. Did he do anything that struck you in any particular way? What did you notice about him? There’s no wrong answer.”
Amy was quiet for a long moment, trying to find the right words. She didn’t know how to start. Finally, she said, “You know that thing people say on the news after someone does something terrible? ‘He seemed so normal, so nice,’ all that?” She hesitated, before pressing on. “Will Graham really was nice. I don’t just mean not killing me. He could have told Hannibal Lecter they weren’t going to kill me and been done. He didn’t have to talk to me, or let me out, or take me to the bathroom, or get me water. He was nice.”
It sounded wrong to put it like that, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. “I’m not—I’m not romanticizing him or anything,” she continued. “I saw what he did in the house. I walked right up to it with him right behind me. He butchered someone and—and didn’t give a damn. He said he wanted to. That’s sick.” She shook her head at the memory. “But you always think of people like that as only being nice until they don’t have to be, until they don’t have to pretend. I saw him covered in blood—he didn’t have any reason left to pretend. But he was still nice to me.”
She looked down as she finished, but found herself quickly glancing at Crawford and wondering if she had said completely the wrong thing. However, Crawford only looked thoughtful.
After a moment, he said, “Will Graham doesn’t think how you think, or how I think, or even how Hannibal Lecter thinks.” He took a breath and steepled his fingers. “You had an experience with Will where you saw him at his worst. Yet it seems like he never considered killing you, and that’s what interests me. Did you ever feel that you were in danger from him, at any point?”
“I was afraid when I first saw him. But… I never felt threatened by him,” she said. “I know that sounds weird. But he never acted like he was going to hurt me. It was kind of the opposite, really.”
“How do you mean?”
“He was careful, I guess. He was good at it, so it took me a little while to notice he was doing anything,” she said, thinking back. “It was just little things. He moved slowly. He gave me space. He only touched me once.”
Crawford considered her. “He treated you like a trauma victim,” he said, with a nod. “Will has always had a great deal of empathy, especially for victims. Was there anything else that made an impression?”
“It wasn’t hard to talk to him, even though it should have been.” Amy paused, collecting her thoughts. “I remember—he said something, almost to himself, but I answered him anyway. And then we were just standing there talking. It was strange, but almost easy.” She fell silent again, but Crawford didn’t seem to mind. Then she said, “You don’t really seem surprised by any of this.”
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not, since you knew him. Maybe so, since you’re law enforcement. The police were surprised,” she added. “Everyone at the station was stunned I wasn’t dead just for seeing him, especially once they figured out who he was.”
Crawford was silent himself for a long moment. He exhaled, and then said, “I’m pleasantly surprised. Let’s say reassured in some way. I haven’t seen Will in a long time. What I have seen is his handiwork. Will has done horrible things, and when he’s caught, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s changed from the man I knew, and there’s no denying that. But it gives me hope to know that that man isn’t completely gone. Will was always protective of anyone he perceived as vulnerable, and his first instinct was to help. I’m glad to see that hasn’t changed, no matter what else has.
“I can’t comment on the details of an ongoing federal investigation,” he continued, “but the few murders we’ve been able to connect to Will Graham fit a particular pattern. But Will’s involvement with Hannibal supports the possibility that those are just the tip of the iceberg. Hannibal Lecter is known for killing indiscriminately, and Will has been with him for a significant amount of time. Which is why I wanted to talk to you,” Crawford said, pointing towards her. “You’re the first person who’s reported an encounter with Will Graham that was more than a simple sighting. The fact that he didn’t kill you tells me a lot, and it answers some of the questions that have kept me up at night. That helps me as a profiler, and relieves me as an old friend. I’m just sorry that my insight comes at your expense.”
Amy shrugged and spread her hands. “Will Graham didn’t do this to me. He didn’t do anything to me.” She pressed her lips together. “Is it wrong that I feel grateful to him?”
He shook his head. “However you feel is how you feel.”
“I feel okay,” she said slowly. “With everything, I mean. I shouldn’t, but I do. Maybe I’ll wake up a month from now and it will all hit me, and I’ll have a panic attack or something. But right now, I don’t—I don’t feel traumatized. It was scary while it was happening, but it’s over,” she said, struggling to clarify it. “It stopped. All the things that had happened to me, that were happening to me, that were going to happen to me—Will Graham stopped them. And when he left, it was like he just took them with him.” She broke off, unsure of how to finish or what else to say.
“Will has always had the ability to connect with people,” Crawford said. “If he helped you in some way, even inadvertently, then that’s a positive thing and you should take it as one. It seems you had a conversation of sorts.” He leaned back slightly, then said, “You never asked his name. Did you consider it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. She hadn’t avoided the question out of self-preservation; it just honestly hadn’t occurred to her. “He was the only reason I got out of that house. Who he was didn’t matter so much as what he did.”
“Understandable.” Crawford inclined his head. “You were very lucky.” It seemed like he was going to say something else, but then he simply put his hands on his knees, preparing to rise. “I want to thank you for your time. You were extremely helpful.”
He stood, thanking her again, and she walked him to the door.
Amy closed the door as he left, briefly looking at her wrist as she removed her hand from the knob. Her wrists were one place that she had faint bruises, physical reminders of what had happened. They would fade soon. Other things would fade as well. As time passed, the details of her days being held captive would blur, and all this would mean even less than it did now.
But no matter what parts she forgot, she knew Will Graham wouldn’t be among them. That didn’t bother her; better to remember him than something else. He was painted across her memory in stark detail, from the moment he’d opened the cabinet to the one he’d closed it.
A question more unwise than the one of his name had slipped from her lips when she’d asked if he was a serial killer. But he hadn’t cared at all. He had answered, standing across from her soaked in blood, a look of utter serenity on his face.
Genre: Gen, outsider POV
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Lots of blood
A/N: My fic for the Radiance Anthology for Hannibal fandom, the theme of which was 'perspectives on Will's becoming.' We've been given the freedom to post now since most of the books have arrived and the PDF has gone out, and I figured I'd go ahead and do so here on LJ/DW, even if I might wait a bit on AO3. Beta'd by verdant_fire.
Summary: An unexpected encounter between a victim and a murderer. A study of how Will is totally changed, yet exactly the same.
Her breath caught in her throat as she asked, “Are you a serial killer?”
“By definition.” He was entirely relaxed, as if he didn’t find anything about this situation unusual.
“What other way is there?”
One corner of his mouth turned up as he gave a barely perceptible shrug. “That’s for the psychiatrists to sort out, I suppose.”
----------
With One Hand (and with the Other)
She had been locked in the cabinet for three days. The passage of time was easy to mark. Her captor—he wanted her to call him Joe—was regular with breakfast and dinner, though irregular with everything else. Sometimes he played at being friendly, while other times his enjoyment at having power over her was obvious. It had always been clear that he intended to kill her.
Her kidnapping had happened on a lonely road in broad daylight when a pickup had skidded to a stop next to where she was walking. The struggle that had ensued was a blur; she had screamed and fought the man, but he had thrown her in the bed of his truck, slammed the cover shut, and sped off. Her destination had been a rickety house, the one-room basement of which she had been hauled into despite her efforts. She had pleaded and cried every step of the way, but she’d ended up shoved into a reinforced metal tool cabinet with her hands tied behind her nevertheless.
She was alone most of the time, though he came and went throughout the day, “visiting” to carry on one-sided conversations with her, as well as taking her out of the cabinet to eat and go to the bathroom. The first time she had been taken upstairs, she had tried to get away. But she couldn’t so much as open a door by herself, and there had been no one to hear her scream as he’d dragged her back down the basement stairs and locked her up. Something had broken in her after that, and she’d disengaged, retreating into herself and only acknowledging him when she had to. Sometimes she wondered if anyone even knew she was missing. She had arrived at the campus dorms on the early move-in date, and none of her friends had been there yet. It hadn’t seemed strange to go on a walk by herself; she had done it last year all the time. That seemed a world away now.
It was nearing late evening, as best she could guess. She had been left alone for longer than usual, and while she distantly wondered about not being fed, more pressing at the moment was the fact that she had needed to pee for hours and was growing increasingly desperate for a trip to the bathroom.
When the basement door finally opened and he came down the stairs, he didn’t immediately let her out. Instead, she heard him moving around the basement, almost haphazardly digging through the junk and tools that had once made this a proper workshop. His footsteps stopped in front of her, and then he was sliding the bolt of the cabinet.
One door opened first, as it always did, and she glanced up. A dark-haired man she’d never seen before was staring down at her, shock clear on his face. But the frantic hope that leapt in her chest was short-lived. He was covered in blood and had a folding knife in his hand, the blade still wet.
She pressed backwards in panic, as if she had any real room to move, as if she could actually get away from him. He followed the movement, bending down to her level as his expression shifted to something gentler. He closed the knife, but that only drew her attention to it once more. The leather gloves he wore were slick with blood, and she couldn’t imagine that he had done anything other than just murder someone. There was only one person here besides her for him to have murdered. Now there was just her.
At that moment, the top step creaked as someone else paused on it. The man in front of her stood in one smooth motion, turning to the side as he looked up.
“Did you find a saw?” asked a voice from above, an accent in it she couldn’t quite place.
“Not yet.”
She couldn’t see the man at the top of the stairs, but he could obviously see some part of her.
“But you found something else, I see,” he said. After another beat, he asked, “Dead or alive?”
“Alive.”
“Is that an answer or a recommendation?”
“It’s the outcome that’s going to occur.” His voice was soft, but there was a note of something unyielding there. His face was in profile as he looked up at the other man; a faded scar crossed his cheek, and she saw a tic in his jaw as the silence continued.
She slowly realized the conversation was about killing her, as well as the fact that the man whose shirt was drenched in blood wasn’t planning on it. She focused on him in desperation, even though nothing about him made sense.
“It would be simpler to dispose of her,” the man on the stairs said. His tone was casual, like he wasn’t really arguing a point but was exploring options.
The man in front of her chuckled. “It would be simpler not to do this to begin with. Simplicity has never featured with us.”
There was a pause before the other spoke again. “We must all be true to our natures. Who am I to deny you yours? Though I am intrigued—collateral damage has been acceptable to you in some instances.”
The man’s grip on the cabinet door shifted. His eyes flickered in her direction, before he stared blankly at the room. “A teenage girl is never going to be acceptable as my collateral damage.”
There was a measured silence.
“Then you must arrange things to your satisfaction,” the second man said, apparently agreeable. “You will not mind if I finish the work on Mr. Brandon?”
“Not at all.”
He moved away from her then, steps echoing across the floor. She heard the clanking sounds of metal as he again rummaged through the things that were scattered across the worktops. Apparently finding what he needed, he walked towards the stairs to hand it to the other man.
“Thank you,” the second man said. The top step creaked once more, before his footsteps faded back into the house above.
A moment later, the man who had found her approached again. He opened the doors fully and crouched in front of the cabinet, keeping his movements slow.
He met her eyes, expression earnest. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Joe had said that, too, all the time: “Be good and I won’t hurt you,” or “I’m not gonna hurt you, girl.” But even at the time, she could tell the words were hollow, repeated in a half-hearted effort to convince her she wasn’t going to die here. He had never meant them.
The man in front of her did. She could hear the difference in his voice, see it in his face. It seemed in complete opposition to everything else about him; he was clearly a killer, blood still on his hands. She didn’t know why he didn’t want to kill her as well, only that she had heard him disagree with the man who had. Part of her knew she still shouldn’t trust anything he said—the other part didn’t care, if only he would get her out of here.
“Is he dead?” she asked, speaking for the first time. “Did you kill him?”
“I did,” he said softly.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t already guessed that, but his easy admission of murder sent a chill down her spine. At the same time, she couldn’t suppress the relief she felt at the confirmation. The dread that had been pressing down on her for days seemed to lift, even if there was still a man between her and her ability to leave this house.
He hadn’t moved at all, and he was nothing but calm as he watched her.
She studied his face, surprised at how easy it was to meet his eyes. “Are you going to let me go?”
“I’m going to leave you just as you are for the police to find tomorrow.”
“Will they be here?”
His lips twitched, like he was privately amused. “I imagine so. There’s something of a spectacle in the front yard.”
She closed her eyes for a moment; the relief flooding her was almost a tangible thing. She was actually going to be leaving this place. More than anything, she wanted to be gone this instant, but the fact that her life wasn’t going to end here gave her the strength to keep from screaming and begging to be let out now.
Though she wasn’t above begging, and there was something else she needed, something he might permit.
When she opened her eyes, he was still looking at her with a quiet intensity.
Gathering her courage, she asked, “Can I pee? Please?”
He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise his face didn’t change.
“I’m not stupid,” she continued shakily. “I’m not going to try anything. I just really, really need to pee. Please, I can’t make it until tomorrow.”
There was a long silence, but he didn’t immediately say no. Then he exhaled, the leather on his gloves squeaking as he shifted his weight.
“After you’re done, you’re going to get back in the cabinet,” he said. He raised his brows to emphasize the point.
“Yes,” she agreed. If only she could use the bathroom, she wouldn’t fight him about being locked up again. This was suddenly so close to being over. All she had to do was do what he said and she could go back to her life.
He nodded, then stood.
It took a moment of him staring down at her for her to realize that he was waiting for her to get out. Joe had always yanked her up by the arm when he’d wanted her out. Her hands were still tied behind her, but with some effort, she braced her back against one side of the cabinet and managed to get her feet under her. After another moment, she pushed her weight away from the cabinet wall and got her balance.
She was abruptly self-conscious as she stepped out, no longer curled up and starkly aware that she wasn’t wearing anything but a blue cami and a pair of panties. His eyes briefly ran over her, but there wasn’t any interest, any intent—there wasn’t anything. His gaze was detached; he was both looking at her and looking past her, like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.
“He fed you,” he commented, more to himself than to her.
“I could eat, as long as he actually fed it to me. He didn’t untie me.” She had tried not eating at first, but hunger had soon won out, and only her dignity had suffered in eating takeout fed to her forkful by forkful.
He tilted his head. “He hadn’t assaulted you yet.”
The words came out of nowhere, but they hit her like a punch to the gut. “No,” she breathed. “He—he was drawing it out, I think. He liked to see me, wanted me to know he was looking. He took my shirt and jeans the first day. He looked at me like—like… the way men look at you sometimes,” she said, dropping her gaze. “I knew it was coming.” Then she glanced back at him. “How did you?”
“In crimes like this, a sexual component isn’t uncommon,” he said, sounding disturbingly like one of her professors. “But I also know what he did to the others.”
“There were others?”
“Two. The police haven’t connected them yet, but they will.” He regarded her evenly. “Three would have classified him as a serial killer.”
She would have classified him as a serial killer, he meant. She looked briefly at the tool cabinet, wondering about the other two girls. Had they died in this room, or somewhere else in the house? She repressed a shudder.
If not for the man standing in front of her, she would have shared their fate. The man with sincerity in his eyes and blood spatter on his face. The man who was altogether too comfortable with being soaked in another man’s blood for this to be anything like the first time he had done this.
Her breath caught in her throat as she asked, “Are you a serial killer?”
“By definition.” He was entirely relaxed, as if he didn’t find anything about this situation unusual.
“What other way is there?”
One corner of his mouth turned up as he gave a barely perceptible shrug. “That’s for the psychiatrists to sort out, I suppose.”
She swallowed at the confirmation that she was actually standing here with a serial killer. It was a strange sensation, all the stranger for the fact that he wasn’t making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, wasn’t setting off that inner alarm of danger. Maybe after three days of fear and misery, she was just too drained to be afraid of someone who had already vetoed killing her. She’d thought for days that she was going to die here, and now she wasn’t. That was all that mattered.
When she didn’t speak again, he said, “I’ll take you to the bathroom.”
It wasn’t until he’d spoken that she fully realized that going to the bathroom meant going upstairs, even though she knew the bathroom was upstairs. She looked upwards; the basement door still stood open. It seemed ominous, a gaping emptiness. She didn’t see the door and imagine freedom just beyond it; she imagined the man who had suggested disposing of her as casually as other people talked about the weather. He was somewhere on the main level of the house. The compulsion not to be anywhere near him was so overpowering it was visceral.
She glanced at the floor, shaking her head to herself. “Never mind. I’ll—I’ll just go in the corner if you’ll turn around.”
His brow furrowed, but only for a second, as he almost instantly grasped the reason for her abrupt change of track.
“Look at me,” he said, bending his neck to catch her gaze. His expression was smooth but solemn as he continued. “I’m going to take you upstairs, you’re going to pee, and I’m going to bring you right back. Then you’re going to get in the cabinet, and my friend and I are going to leave.”
He didn’t mention her fears at all, didn’t dismiss them or validate them. He simply told her what was going to happen, what he was going to do. She could hear the same steel in his voice that had been there when he’d informed his friend that she would remain alive.
“Okay,” she finally said. He hadn’t let the other man kill her here; he wouldn’t let the other man kill her upstairs. She would get through this.
He turned, gesturing toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
He made her go first. She took the steps at a slow but steady pace, with him keeping close behind her. When they were near the top, almost as an afterthought, he added, “You’re going to see blood.”
She nodded, unable to do anything else at that point besides keep going. Standing up had only made her realize exactly how painfully she needed to pee, and she would much rather do it in a toilet and without an audience, even if that did mean seeing more blood. There had to be blood in the house, given what he looked like. When she came to the doorway, she stepped into the hall, relieved to find it empty with no sign of the other man.
But even though she was prepared, she froze as soon as she saw the blood. There were several bloodstains on the carpet near her, as well as scattered drops on the walls. Farther down the hall there was a massive stain. It stretched across the entire width of the hallway and had drag marks trailing in the direction of the front door. There were handprints halfway up the walls and blood spray higher than that.
It looked like something out of a horror movie, only it was sickeningly real. She was aware that she wasn’t moving, was aware that the man at her back was the one who had done this, the one who had created such carnage. That he had done it to someone who had been planning to kill her didn’t make the scene any less gruesome or any easier to see. But she couldn’t bear to turn around, so she steeled herself and pressed forward, gingerly picking her way around the stains, not wanting her bare feet to touch any of them. The bathroom was only two doors away; she wouldn’t have to go through the large stain. She couldn’t go through the large stain.
When she reached the bathroom, he closed the door behind her, leaving her alone. She did her business quickly, having already figured out a technique for pulling down her panties with her hands behind her back. She had become sadly practiced in the routine of using the restroom while a man stood outside, though it was a relief not to have the ever-present anxiety that this would be the time he’d decide to walk in before she was finished.
Once she was done, she tapped on the door with her foot, and said, “Okay.”
The door opened, and he looked at her squarely. “Do you want a drink of water?”
She was surprised, but immediately said, “Yes.” Her thirst seemed all the more pronounced at the suggestion of a drink.
He stepped halfway into the room, reaching for one of the Dixie cups stacked on the counter. Blood smeared on it as he picked it up, though he was careful to keep his fingers away from the rim. She watched blankly as his gloves left blood on the faucet. Her gaze drifted to the blood on the doorknob, and the blood on the light switch, which she didn’t even remember him flipping on for her.
There was blood on everything he touched. She noticed very suddenly that he hadn’t touched her once.
He held the cup to her lips, and she started sipping at it. The bathroom door was open behind him, and she could see into the hallway, could see one of the handprints on the wall. She again had the thought that nothing about him fit. He stood patiently tipping the cup for her as she drank, feet from where he had brutally murdered a man.
When she drained the cup, he refilled it and brought it to her mouth once more. She finished it more slowly than the first one, but shook her head at his offer of a third, not wanting to drink any more than she’d be able to hold until morning. He threw the cup in the trash, and then moved out of the room, waiting for her. She stepped out in front of him and began the short walk down the hall.
She was prepared for the blood this time, prepared to ignore it and step around it. What she wasn’t prepared for was to see movement in the kitchen, which was straight at the end of the hall, feet away from the basement door. The other man was there, his back to her as he did something at the counter with a knife. Sheer panic consumed her from one breath to the next. Her knees seemed to lock of their own accord, even as she desperately wanted to keep moving. Something instinctive was screaming at her, a terror that froze her in place as it steadily clawed its way up her throat.
A bare hand closed around her upper arm, jolting her out of her stupor. Then she was moving, propelled forward from behind as he steered her toward the stairs. It was the only thing that kept her putting one foot in front of the other, each step bringing her closer to the basement, but also closer to the man in the kitchen. Seconds seemed to pass in slow motion and everything was heightened—the solid grip on her arm, fingers firmly but not painfully pressing into her skin; the blood on the carpet that she still managed to step around; and the man ahead of her, steadily cutting something she couldn’t see with a knife, his sleeves stained red, his shoulders flexing slightly as he worked.
The second her foot touched the first wooden step, relief washed over her, so sudden that she was dizzy from it. He kept his hold on her as they descended, and she felt like she couldn’t get to the bottom fast enough. Once they were off the stairs, he released her.
“Thank you,” she blurted, not even sure which part she was thanking him for.
She saw that he was holding his bloody glove in his other hand. He began tugging it back on.
“I’ve seen your face,” she said. “Why do you even care about fingerprints?”
“My figurative fingerprints are spread here in abundance. That’s no reason to leave my literal ones as well.”
He then gave her a pointed glance, looking back and forth between her and the cabinet.
Uncaring how pathetic it sounded, she said, “Why can’t you leave me tied up somewhere else?” It was the least she could ask for. She knew he wouldn’t let her go; he wouldn’t want the police here until he was well away. “Please, everything hurts when I’m in there.”
To her surprise, he didn’t immediately insist on her compliance. Instead, he surveyed the basement, contemplating the tools and debris that littered every surface. Then his eyes landed back on her and he shook his head.
“I know you can’t get free in the cabinet. I don’t have the time to guarantee that would be the case elsewhere.”
She nodded in acceptance and began walking toward the cabinet. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but she could endure it for a few more hours.
He followed behind her at an unhurried pace.
Biting her lip, she ducked her head and stepped in, managing to curl up at the bottom in a position that wasn’t entirely horrible. It was much easier when she hadn’t been forced inside, though there was still no room to shift once she was seated.
He crouched in front of her once more, his gaze even. “No one’s going to question that you’re a victim. But there are going to be plenty of questions, given what’s going to be found upstairs.”
She realized he meant that she was going to be the only person alive in a house where someone had been murdered, and that the circumstances were more than unusual.
“Are you telling me not to answer them?” she asked.
“I’m telling you that until certain people become involved, what happened here won’t sound credible.”
She supposed that might be true. She had been saved by a serial killer—she barely believed her.
He was still watching her, his expression entirely impassive. She stared back, searching his face for anything that made sense.
“Why did you kill him?”
His lips quirked. “Because I wanted to,” he said simply.
Then he shut the cabinet door.
The sound of the latch being bolted followed. A moment later, she heard his footsteps cross the concrete floor and recede up the stairs. He didn’t close the basement door, but there were no further sounds from above. After several minutes had passed, the silence settled over her like a blanket, and she knew she was alone.
She found a curious sort of calm in the knowledge. The house was empty and there was no one left to hurt her. She was restrained and uncomfortable, but that seemed minor in light of everything else. There was no fear in her mind of not being found. She had seen the bloodbath in the hallway, she knew the body was in the front yard, and she knew a saw had been involved. It really wasn’t a question of if the police would come, but only how long after sunrise it would take.
Even though she was no longer on edge and her captor was dead and gone, the last few days had taken their toll on her, and eventually she succumbed to an exhausted sleep. She woke feeling as rested as was possible under the circumstances, her arms beyond sore and a crick in her neck. The house was still silent.
Hours later, that changed when she heard the unquestionable sounds of the house being entered and searched as the police surged through it. She moved her leg, banging her knee against the metal doors and furiously rattling them. Moments later, she was rewarded by a heavy tread quickly descending the wooden steps and crossing the floor.
“I’m in here!” she called.
There was the noise of hands fumbling outside, unlocking the latch. Then the doors were yanked open. The man on the other side was her father’s age, with a weathered face but kind eyes. He wasn’t in uniform, but there was a shiny badge hanging around his neck.
“I’m Detective Riggs,” he said, quickly appraising her. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Amy. Amy Waters.”
Recognition flashed across his face; she must have been reported missing. “All right, Amy. I’m going to help you out, all right?”
She nodded. He reached for her, hooking his hands under her arms and pulling her up, being careful not to bang her head on the top of the cabinet. “Thank you,” she said, when she got her feet under her and was able to stand. She turned to the side, showing him her zip-tied hands. “Can you get these off?”
“I can do that.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small knife. “I need you to hold still for me.”
Amy nodded again.
“Everything’s going to be fine now, Amy,” he said, sliding the knife under the zip tie. “You’re going to be just fine.”
The tie snapped. “I know,” she said calmly, slowly moving her stiff arms. “He’s dead.”
Even as she spoke, she felt like she wasn’t acting right, though she knew there was no correct way to act. But she couldn’t help the strange way that all of her anxiety had disappeared somewhere during her conversation with the serial killer.
Detective Riggs looked at her with curiosity, though not suspicion, as she turned to face him again, still shaking out her arms. “How do you know that?” he asked.
Amy took a breath. “Well, you’re the second person to rescue me.”
-----
Things were hectic after that. She was looked over and questioned about potential injuries by first responders, but when she was pronounced to have nothing more than a few bruises on her arms, she was taken to the police station instead of the hospital. Someone produced a set of sweats for her to wear at the station, and she shared a tearful phone call with her parents, who were coming immediately to get her, but who lived over an hour away. She had already been told by Detective Riggs that she had been reported missing by her mother, who, after not receiving replies from her for two days, had accessed the GPS on her phone. Her mother had made frantic calls after that, and local police had found her phone and purse in the underbrush by the side of the road and started an investigation.
After the phone call, Riggs returned to his office with a younger woman who introduced herself as Detective Navarro. He took a seat behind the desk, while Navarro smiled and sat down in the chair next to her. They asked if she wanted to wait to talk until her parents arrived, but Amy didn’t have a problem with talking. She told them about being taken, about her days being held, and about the man who had found her.
It was only at this part that the nature of Detective Riggs’s questions began to change. “This man told you he was a serial killer?”
“Yes.” She paused. “I asked.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Seems like an odd conversation to have.”
“It just… sort of happened.”
“Given the skill of the mutilation on the body, we have every reason to believe he was a serial killer. I’m more interested in the fact that he left a witness alive to identify him.”
“He acted like it didn’t matter if he was identified. But—that wasn’t why he left me,” she continued haltingly. Amy still had no idea exactly why he hadn’t killed her, only that it had been a reason all his own. She remembered the surprise on his face when he’d opened the cabinet, remembered how quickly it had turned to concern. “He decided I wasn’t going to die the second he saw me, I think.”
Detective Riggs exhaled and reviewed what he had written on his pad, before looking back at her. “Did he give any indication why he wanted to kill Joe Brandon?”
“No,” she said. “He—he was just so calm about everything. Like he’d done it all before.”
He nodded absently, making another note. “I’m going to get a sketch artist in here while things are fresh in your mind. But is there anything else you can tell me about the man he was with? You heard them talking but you never saw him?”
“Not really. I saw him in the kitchen from behind. He was cutting something up.”
Detective Navarro straightened in her chair. “What?”
“He was at the kitchen counter with a knife.”
“And you said he had an accent earlier,” Navarro said, almost to herself. “It all clicked when you said kitchen.” She turned to Amy. “Was the man you spoke to around forty-five, with a scar on his forehead and another on his cheek?”
“He had one on his cheek, but I couldn’t see his forehead,” Amy said. “His hair was in the way. It was dark and kind of curly,” she added, wanting to help. “And he was about that old, I guess.”
Navarro stood at once and went to say something in Detective Riggs’s ear. His brows raised and he gaped at her, incredulous. “Two killers,” she said in a low voice. “Skilled mutilation, possible organ removal, and the description fits.”
“Christ,” he muttered. Then he made a vague gesture. “Go ahead.”
Detective Navarro pulled out her phone and typed something in, and then moved around the desk to show Amy. On the screen was the face of the serial killer, pictured on a simple Google Image search. “Is this him?”
“Yes,” Amy said. There was no question about it. “Who is he?”
“That’s Will Graham,” Riggs said, resigned.
“Will Graham,” she repeated, wondering why that sounded familiar. “He was… he was the one who was with… Hannibal Lecter.” The name fell from her lips slowly as her blood ran cold. Hannibal Lecter was practically an urban legend, only he was chillingly real. And she had come within a hair’s breadth of meeting him. Hannibal Lecter had been the man in the kitchen. She had been in a house with Hannibal Lecter, had been feet away from Hannibal Lecter as she’d stumbled down the hall.
But thinking of the hallway made her think of Will Graham. Even behind her, he had still been between them.
“You know who they are, then?” Detective Riggs said.
“Yes.” Hannibal Lecter’s trial and later escape had been impossible not to hear about; it had been an ever-present story for months at a time when she’d been in high school. “I know the names. I might have recognized Hannibal Lecter, but I’m not sure. But I never thought Will Graham looked familiar at all.”
Riggs nodded and tossed his pen down with an air of finality. “We’re gonna have to call the Feds on this one.”
-----
The detectives took her statements fully, though Riggs told her it was likely that someone from the FBI would be contacting her later. Her parents arrived during all this, and after their initial relief and happiness, were horrified to hear what had happened to her. Amy found herself in the peculiar position of reassuring them that she was more or less fine. A small part of her brain wondered if she was just in shock, but she really did feel fine. It was over with, and it was never going to happen again.
She went home with her parents after everything at the station was finished. Over the weekend, she would be going back to campus, just in time to get settled for her classes on Monday. But that night, she slept in her old bed, and was surprised but pleased when her sleep was dreamless.
The next morning, they were contacted by a Jack Crawford from the FBI, who had flown in to see the crime scene. He came to her house in the afternoon; Amy sat alone in the formal living room with him, her mother closing the French doors behind her after Amy said she didn’t mind talking to him by herself.
Jack Crawford regarded her for a moment before he spoke. “I want to apologize for the ambush, but I wanted to speak to you while events were recent.”
“It’s fine. I’d rather get it all done before school.”
He nodded. “The details of the case are being investigated. We’re looking for Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, of course, but a thorough DNA search of Joe Brandon’s house is also being done. If Will said there were two more girls, then there were two more girls, and we need to connect them to open cases or missing persons so their families can have closure. But none of that is what I want to talk to you about. I don’t have any more questions about the particulars—the local police were very thorough and you were very detailed. I don’t think there’s anything you can give us to help with the investigation that you haven’t already.”
That surprised her, as she’d assumed she would be going over the same things she had yesterday with the police. “Then what are you here for?”
“I wanted to talk about Will Graham.” He paused. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re not just some FBI agent,” she said. “You’re the head of something.”
“I head the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I also knew Will, personally. Before he disappeared with Hannibal.”
Her eyes widened, even as she wondered if that was why he looked so weary. “So… what do you want me to tell you?” she asked.
“Anything you want to say.” Crawford brought his hands together. “I want to know what you thought about him. Did he do anything that struck you in any particular way? What did you notice about him? There’s no wrong answer.”
Amy was quiet for a long moment, trying to find the right words. She didn’t know how to start. Finally, she said, “You know that thing people say on the news after someone does something terrible? ‘He seemed so normal, so nice,’ all that?” She hesitated, before pressing on. “Will Graham really was nice. I don’t just mean not killing me. He could have told Hannibal Lecter they weren’t going to kill me and been done. He didn’t have to talk to me, or let me out, or take me to the bathroom, or get me water. He was nice.”
It sounded wrong to put it like that, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. “I’m not—I’m not romanticizing him or anything,” she continued. “I saw what he did in the house. I walked right up to it with him right behind me. He butchered someone and—and didn’t give a damn. He said he wanted to. That’s sick.” She shook her head at the memory. “But you always think of people like that as only being nice until they don’t have to be, until they don’t have to pretend. I saw him covered in blood—he didn’t have any reason left to pretend. But he was still nice to me.”
She looked down as she finished, but found herself quickly glancing at Crawford and wondering if she had said completely the wrong thing. However, Crawford only looked thoughtful.
After a moment, he said, “Will Graham doesn’t think how you think, or how I think, or even how Hannibal Lecter thinks.” He took a breath and steepled his fingers. “You had an experience with Will where you saw him at his worst. Yet it seems like he never considered killing you, and that’s what interests me. Did you ever feel that you were in danger from him, at any point?”
“I was afraid when I first saw him. But… I never felt threatened by him,” she said. “I know that sounds weird. But he never acted like he was going to hurt me. It was kind of the opposite, really.”
“How do you mean?”
“He was careful, I guess. He was good at it, so it took me a little while to notice he was doing anything,” she said, thinking back. “It was just little things. He moved slowly. He gave me space. He only touched me once.”
Crawford considered her. “He treated you like a trauma victim,” he said, with a nod. “Will has always had a great deal of empathy, especially for victims. Was there anything else that made an impression?”
“It wasn’t hard to talk to him, even though it should have been.” Amy paused, collecting her thoughts. “I remember—he said something, almost to himself, but I answered him anyway. And then we were just standing there talking. It was strange, but almost easy.” She fell silent again, but Crawford didn’t seem to mind. Then she said, “You don’t really seem surprised by any of this.”
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not, since you knew him. Maybe so, since you’re law enforcement. The police were surprised,” she added. “Everyone at the station was stunned I wasn’t dead just for seeing him, especially once they figured out who he was.”
Crawford was silent himself for a long moment. He exhaled, and then said, “I’m pleasantly surprised. Let’s say reassured in some way. I haven’t seen Will in a long time. What I have seen is his handiwork. Will has done horrible things, and when he’s caught, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s changed from the man I knew, and there’s no denying that. But it gives me hope to know that that man isn’t completely gone. Will was always protective of anyone he perceived as vulnerable, and his first instinct was to help. I’m glad to see that hasn’t changed, no matter what else has.
“I can’t comment on the details of an ongoing federal investigation,” he continued, “but the few murders we’ve been able to connect to Will Graham fit a particular pattern. But Will’s involvement with Hannibal supports the possibility that those are just the tip of the iceberg. Hannibal Lecter is known for killing indiscriminately, and Will has been with him for a significant amount of time. Which is why I wanted to talk to you,” Crawford said, pointing towards her. “You’re the first person who’s reported an encounter with Will Graham that was more than a simple sighting. The fact that he didn’t kill you tells me a lot, and it answers some of the questions that have kept me up at night. That helps me as a profiler, and relieves me as an old friend. I’m just sorry that my insight comes at your expense.”
Amy shrugged and spread her hands. “Will Graham didn’t do this to me. He didn’t do anything to me.” She pressed her lips together. “Is it wrong that I feel grateful to him?”
He shook his head. “However you feel is how you feel.”
“I feel okay,” she said slowly. “With everything, I mean. I shouldn’t, but I do. Maybe I’ll wake up a month from now and it will all hit me, and I’ll have a panic attack or something. But right now, I don’t—I don’t feel traumatized. It was scary while it was happening, but it’s over,” she said, struggling to clarify it. “It stopped. All the things that had happened to me, that were happening to me, that were going to happen to me—Will Graham stopped them. And when he left, it was like he just took them with him.” She broke off, unsure of how to finish or what else to say.
“Will has always had the ability to connect with people,” Crawford said. “If he helped you in some way, even inadvertently, then that’s a positive thing and you should take it as one. It seems you had a conversation of sorts.” He leaned back slightly, then said, “You never asked his name. Did you consider it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. She hadn’t avoided the question out of self-preservation; it just honestly hadn’t occurred to her. “He was the only reason I got out of that house. Who he was didn’t matter so much as what he did.”
“Understandable.” Crawford inclined his head. “You were very lucky.” It seemed like he was going to say something else, but then he simply put his hands on his knees, preparing to rise. “I want to thank you for your time. You were extremely helpful.”
He stood, thanking her again, and she walked him to the door.
Amy closed the door as he left, briefly looking at her wrist as she removed her hand from the knob. Her wrists were one place that she had faint bruises, physical reminders of what had happened. They would fade soon. Other things would fade as well. As time passed, the details of her days being held captive would blur, and all this would mean even less than it did now.
But no matter what parts she forgot, she knew Will Graham wouldn’t be among them. That didn’t bother her; better to remember him than something else. He was painted across her memory in stark detail, from the moment he’d opened the cabinet to the one he’d closed it.
A question more unwise than the one of his name had slipped from her lips when she’d asked if he was a serial killer. But he hadn’t cared at all. He had answered, standing across from her soaked in blood, a look of utter serenity on his face.