The Cell

Running With the Deer

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Summary:      Jack Crawford finds a videotape from the past.  

Timeline:        This vignette would occur just after Chapter 11 of HANNIBAL.

Rating:           PG-13

Copy:            Part 1 of 1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack Crawford invited Starling in and shut the office door.  Her stomach stirred uneasily as she found a chair; her Section Chief usually kept the door open when they spoke.

On his desk she saw the report she had submitted, detailing her foray into the abandoned State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, her encounter with Sammie, and her failure to recover the file on Hannibal Lecter.

Crawford half-sat on the edge of his desk, holding a small box; Starling recognized it as a videotape.

His face was solemn, his voice unnervingly gentle.

“Starling, when I read that every patient’s file—except Lecter’s—was still in the facility, it got me wondering what else may have been left behind, so I went in with a crew over the weekend.”  He tapped the videotape box against his knee.  “We found this under the dropped ceiling in Chilton’s office.  Aside from proving that your earlier impressions of Chilton fell short of the facts—the guy was off the scale and way more than a little dangerous—it also…”  he trailed off, suddenly at a loss to continue.  He looked toward the window and took a breath.  “Starling, while you were helping us on the Jame Gumb case, you spent some time with Lecter, in his cell, according to this tape.  What can you tell me about it?  And it may help you to know, I’m the only person who’s seen this since it was found.”

Starling furrowed her brow.  What was this?  She knew, from Ardelia’s underground, that her mail was being monitored following the letter she’d received from Lecter.  Paul Krendler was behind it, she was sure, and it was all she could do to resist a descent into full-blown paranoia.  But Crawford?  What toxic agenda could he possibly have?  This wasn’t his style.

“Mr. Crawford, I never spent any time in Lecter’s cell.  Chilton wouldn’t have permitted it.”

He shook his head.  “Well, it looked like he not only permitted it, he orchestrated it.  You’re saying you have no memory of it?”   Somehow, he seemed unsurprised. 

“I can categorically state that other than in Memphis, I was never within physical reach of Hannibal Lecter, sir,” she said, resolve hardening her voice.

Crawford sighed and stood.  “Okay.  Then…you need to view this tape.” 

It took scarcely a moment to set up the TV and VCR, which were used daily.  Starling watched the screen flicker, then saw a black and white image that was all too familiar.

It was a view from the surveillance camera that the asylum had maintained in the violent ward.  It had provided her first glimpse of Hannibal Lecter, the day she’d first interviewed him.  In that moment, as she’d prepared to take that eerie, unnerving walk down the dank corridor, she’d seen him reclining on his cot, perusing a magazine, but in the relatively short time it had taken to arrive at his cell, he’d  stood, alert, to greet her…

This tape had obviously been recorded from the same camera, which lived in a stout metal cage in the far front corner of the cell.  The resolution was very sharp.  She saw the cot, the table, the toilet and sink…and the bare walls, where Chilton had later removed Lecter’s detailed hand drawings of Florence.  There was no sound.

Lecter sat on the cot, his face to the camera.  He was not alone, however.  Next to him, stretched out on the cot, head on the small white pillow, she saw herself.   She was very still, and Lecter was blotting her face and neck with a towel. Starling saw herself stir.  Lecter spoke to her.  After a moment he rose and went to the sink, wet the towel with cold water and returned to the cot, where he continued his ministrations.

It was obvious that he was talking to her.  On the tape, she nodded her head.  In Crawford’s office, she watched Lecter raise her shirt above the waist; he was examining her ribs.  On the tape, she flinched as Lecter placed the cold, wet towel on her bare midriff; he smiled reassuringly.  She noticed that she had taken hold of his wrist and continued to hold it even as he gently smoothed the towel.  Then he moved slightly downward on the cot, lifted her knee, and examined it.

“Mr. Crawford, I think you can turn that off.  I don’t want to see any more,” said Starling.  Crawford gave her a measured glance, then complied. 

Total, suffocating silence filled the cluttered office.

Starling’s heart was galloping, making her feel ill.  She forced herself to keep her composure.  At least she could feel safe with Crawford again, she thought.  Bless him for not showing this tape to anyone else.

“I remember it now,” she said quietly.  

<><><>

She didn’t need the date in the corner of the screen to bring it back.  It had all happened on a Saturday –the day following her last asylum interview with Lecter.  On Friday, she had gone to make her deal with him, luring him with a phony offer of a transfer to New York, in exchange for his knowledge regarding the identity of Buffalo Bill.  Lecter had accepted the offer—conditionally.  The price he attached to it was intimate information regarding her childhood.  She had told him about her father, the ranch… not all of it, that had come later, in Memphis.  Meanwhile, Lecter had been reasonably helpful with his first clues, and she’d come away from it with a feeling of hard-won accomplishment.  Baring her soul to Hannibal Lecter—twice—had taken more of her than fumbling in Jame Gumb’s nightmare basement.

On Monday, of course, Chilton had smashed their efforts to bits with one blow from his monstrous ego.  He’d undermined the Bureau in the eyes of Senator Martin and the Justice Department, given Lecter access to the distraught mother, to humiliate in front of a crowd, and then, of course, paved the way for Lecter’s bloody escape from the courthouse, and the newest murders in Florence.  All of the Lecter-induced stress they were now experiencing, seven years later, could be traced to Chilton’s bumbling.  Just thinking of the man made Starling want to tear her hair and hope, meanly, that Lecter had succeeded in tracking him down.  The tape, and the memories it unleashed, offered her much better insight into her hatred for Chilton, and her seemingly conflicted feelings about Lecter.

Early that Saturday morning, Chilton had phoned her in her dorm room with a special offer.  I was so dense! she reflected now.  She’d never questioned the call, or the offer, or the circumstances. Ardelia had gone home for the weekend, and Clarice hadn’t taken the time to track down Crawford or anyone else to notify, reasoning that she’d report the whole thing when she got back.   She’d been too excited, too eager.  She had quickly showered, thrown on what she thought of as her “Lecter clothes”—a demure, tailored suit with a silk blouse, sheer stockings and reasonably decent shoes—and raced to the hospital in her beat-up but faithful Pinto.

She had to hand it to Chilton, though.  He had managed to fool everyone, not just her.  Of course, on a Saturday, he had a better chance of pulling it off.  Barney had weekends off, as did most of the more knowledgeable staff.  So when Chilton informed the skeleton crew that the Department of Safety had ordered the ward evacuated due to faulty electrical wiring, they obediently set about relocating the inmates to another wing of the hospital.  Cleverly, Chilton had volunteered to assume total responsibility for Hannibal Lecter, and apparently told the staff that no less than the FBI was sending an agent to help him accomplish the move.  Certainly, this was a relief to the orderlies and nurses, who were petrified of The Cannibal.  They never questioned Chilton’s authority.

Clarice, for her part, had played perfectly into Chilton’s hands.  “You’ll be doing us a favor,” he’d explained on the phone.  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Miss Starling.  I know perfectly well that you’ve made more headway with Lecter than I ever could.  This is a highly inconvenient task, and the risks are incalculable.  We may have half a chance to keep him quiet if he has you for company while we move him.  And you’ll have the opportunity to…quiz him further.”

***

“No hard feelings, I hope?” Chilton had slimed her as they made their way down the unusually quiet staircase that led to the violent ward.  She’d given him some non-committal answer and tried to maintain professionalism as her heart hammered with anticipation.  It was so strange to see the empty reception area, and to hear only the hollow, distant drip of water in the corridor, which usually echoed with screams and curses.  The monitors were all live, and she could see the three empty cells and the single occupied one.  Chilton told her they’d moved most of the inmates last night, but had left Lecter where he was, lacking the personnel to do the job properly.   “You’ll have to leave your gun here, of course,” Chilton said, all brisk and businesslike, and she had seen the logic in this as she unstrapped the holster and laid it carefully on Barney’s bare desk, along with her purse.  Then Chilton had opened the electronic gate and led the way down toward Lecter’s cell. 

One look at Hannibal Lecter should have tipped her off, she realized with bitter hindsight.  For all her other visits, she had never felt that he would turn her away—at least until the conversation had gotten underway.  Whether standing alert and ready, or casually seated at his drawing table, he had welcomed her, in his odd fashion.  It disturbed her this time to see him standing in the far corner of the cell, his face set in a scowl, his arms crossed defensively on his chest (and without the aid of a straitjacket, she noted—why hadn’t Chilton trussed him up?).  She assumed that he was reacting this way because he had never seen her with Chilton, and the animosity between the two men was well-known and documented.

Chilton said nothing as he sorted through his keys, and Starling realized that should have been another clue.  Usually, the little creep loved to hear the sound of his voice, and loved to annoy Hannibal Lecter with it.  He was the chatty type, who felt a compelling need to obliterate thoughtful silences.  How unlike Crawford, she had reflected.    She stood closer than usual to Chilton as he prepared to unlock the cell—certainly not from any desire to smell the Sen-Sen on his breath, but just her pure, naïve eagerness to proceed. Tellingly, she never felt any fear of Lecter, at least in the sense of bodily harm.  She was aware only of a certain embarrassment on her part:  She was invading the doctor’s private space without a direct invitation from him, and hoped that wouldn’t make him angry.

These thoughts ended abruptly as Chilton, in one viper-like move, pushed open the heavy door and violently shoved her into the cell.

“Snack time, Hannibal!” he’d chortled, slammed the door with great force and strolled back up the corridor, laughing like the mad scientist in a 1950s horror film. 

She landed badly, hearing the wooden smack of her bones on the cold stone floor, before she even felt the pain.  But when it hit, it overwhelmed her.  Her forehead, nose, chin, elbows, chest, ribs, pelvis and knees all registered the impact at once, and the room went dim.

***