“My dear Clarice,

            Are we back to quid pro quo?  Well, then, if you insist.  It’s rather audacious of you to assume forgiveness, you know.  What would Jack say?  I wonder…  But he’s gone now, isn’t he?  That’s too bad -- I have the feeling this is the sort of thing he would have hated.

            What sin, what offense did you commit that I should forgive you for?  Answer that, Clarice, and I’ll let you know if I have, and why.

            So your father would have been ashamed of you.  That must sting, little Starling.  Are you ashamed of yourself?  Does his world still circumscribe yours, the way his strong arms used to circle around you?  I can tell you this:  you won’t find me in West Virginia, that’s certain.

            Ergo, you must make a journey if you still wish to capture me.  I’m sure you know the first rule of the traveler is to pack lightly.  In the box you’ll find something to assist you with that.  Remember, you can’t take it all with you.  And I know you’ve discovered that you can never go home again.  So weigh your choices carefully.  Take only what you need.

            I’m so sorry to hear about the lambs.  My, my, whatever do you think could make them stop?

 

Awaiting your answers with ‘baited’ breath,

Hannibal Lecter, M.D.”

 

            The letter slid out of Clarice’s hands, and the heavy paper fell like a stone.  Stewart lunged to catch it.  She slid it into a plastic envelope with a sigh of relief.

            Starling didn’t even notice.  Her attention was turned inward, focusing on the sensations that Lecter’s words elicited from her body.  She felt a tightness deep and low in her abdomen, and a spreading heat emanating outward from that center.  Her nipples chafed against her brassiere, and she was acutely aware of a tingling sensation between her legs.  Her mouth parted, her tongue ran over dry lips, and her mind was foggy as she wondered why her reaction was so desperately intense.  Then she realized… you’ve admitted it, now.  You know you crave the letters; you know you want him in your head.  You’ve freed your body to respond, that’s all.  She could not imagine sex being any better than what she had just experienced.

            While Stewart was examining the letter, Cooper was examining Starling.  He saw her eyes close, her head fall back, her lips open.  He had never seen her so completely vulnerable, and he knew at once that this was what she needed.  Someone who could open her up like a tin can, strip away her defenses like masking tape, and force his way inside the shell she could never open willingly.

            He cleared his throat politely, and Starling’s eyelids flew open.  She swallowed, hard, and reached for the tissue paper.  Gently folding it aside, she uncovered the bronze scales.  A card hung from them, dangling like a Christmas tree ornament.  “I would have included your weight in gold,” it said, “but I know what happens to evidence in the F.B.I.  How much do you weigh now, Clarice?”

            The barb found its mark.  A flash of anger surged through Clarice as she thought of the Bureau stealing bits and pieces of her over the years, like the cocaine that disappears, little by little.  She reached out a gloved finger and stroked the cool metal of the scales, marveling at the perfect balance.  She said, “Stewart, why don’t you get started on the letter.  I’d like to work with this personally.”

            Amanda nodded her assent.  As she left the office, she was holding the envelope up to the light, scrutinizing the contents.

            Starling sat down, allowing herself to lean back in the chair and to just simply be for a moment.  Cooper took a glove from the box, put it on his right hand, and centered himself as he reached for the scales.  Before he even touched them, he was transported to the courtyard of a vast dwelling, stone walls encircling him.  As a part of him became aware of fingers touching metal, he looked up and saw the night sky spinning like a child’s top over his head.  Passages opened up in every direction, tunnels into blackness, tunnels into light, tunnels barred with thick iron, tunnels paved with glass.  He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, turned, and just missed the figure that darted into one of the tunnels.  He had the fleeting impression it had been a small girl.  Suddenly he felt the unmistakable chill of watching eyes upon him.  He sensed a cold and devastating intent, and instantly knew he was an unwelcome prowler in someone’s very private home.  Something warm touched his shoulder then, and he whipped around, finding himself face to face with Laura Palmer.  She smiled at him and shook a finger in his face.  As he stared at her, she put her hands on his cheeks and leaned into him.  Her lips touched his, and he felt her mouth the word “No.”  He closed his eyes and lost himself in the kiss.  When he opened them again, he was standing once again in the dungeon office, Clarice’s eyes curious upon him.

            “Where have you been for the last two minutes, Coop?”

 

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            Hannibal Lecter woke to find himself on the chaise lounge on his balcony, the fresh sea breeze his only blanket.  He struggled to recall the dream that had shaken him to wakefulness, but could only remember a feeling of rage, the image of a man, dark-haired and pale, and the likeness of a girl he’d never seen before.  Her gray-green eyes looked out from a young, lovely face, and her lips curved in an unforgettable smile as she brought her mouth to his.  He felt her whisper the word “No,” as she kissed him as he hadn’t been kissed in a very, very long time.

            Puzzled and amused, he got up from his comfortable repose and padded barefoot into the suite.  He went to the bedroom, gathered his supplies, and brought them back out to the balcony.  In the fading late afternoon light, he sketched his dream, details he did not consciously possess coming to life on the paper.  He let his hand go, and watched as the portrait took shape.  She was wearing an airy little crown, and her hair was piled atop her head in a mass of curls.  The shape of her lips rivaled Mona Lisa’s enigmatic visage for sheer irresistibility.  Her head was tilted slightly to the side, and a pendant hovered in the hollow of her throat… the jagged edge of a broken heart. In the background, off in the upper right corner, where the angle of her head had left some room, there grew the smaller image of a man’s face.  His dark wavy hair was combed back, and his eyes gazed directly ahead.  He’s very handsome, but much too old for her, thought Lecter as his pencil strokes defined the man’s strong jawline.   I wonder what could possibly be between them?

            The irony of this question did not go unnoticed, and it was with a rueful smirk that Lecter finished the sketch.  He tore it off the pad and took it into the suite, placing it on the coffee table next to his bronze.  Someday, he was sure, he would find out what it meant.

            Well, since I’ve got my things out anyway, he thought, and strode out once more the balcony.  He settled back into the chaise and began to sketch a gift for his little Starling.

 

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            Cooper shook his head to clear himself from his daze.  He could not find the words to describe his strange vision.  “Clarice, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an object so highly charged.  Be careful with these scales.”

            Starling could see that he was still shaken.  Beads of sweat had formed at his temples, and his breathing was rapid, almost labored.  She stood up and touched his shoulder, then snatched her hand back as he jumped a mile high.  She had placed her fingers exactly where Laura had touched him.

            “Coop, settle down!  It’s okay, it’s all okay,” she said, soothing him as she would a startled horse.

            He nodded, then found his chair and sank into it.  He had to get his mind off of Laura.  “Scales, scales… what did he say they are for?”

            Starling smiled.  “I’m going on a trip, and I need to make some decisions.  The scales are to help me with that.”

            Cooper thought of the passages, leading out in all directions.  “Are you going to choose the one less traveled by?”

Starling laughed.  “Do you think I could have some time alone?” she asked, gently.

            “Of course,” replied Cooper.  Now what to do?  He couldn’t think of her lips anymore, he’d go mad.  “I’m going to go try to find that bird,” he said, and quickly left the room.

            “Bird?  What bird?” asked Starling, but he was already gone.

            She sighed and sat down tailor style in her chair.  She took the scales from the box and let their heaviness fill her hands.  She felt the metal warm to her touch, absorbing her heat.  She allowed her thoughts to drift, repeating the letter’s words in her head, getting into the right state of mind.  She latched onto the word ‘scales’ and sailed with it for a while… music, weight, justice, armor, size, climbing… she rode each wave and mastered it.  She felt prepared now, ready for the task ahead.

            She set the scales in her lap and held them tightly as she leafed through her memories, through herself like she was reading the pages of a book.  She weighed each action, each part of herself against the imagined gold that Lecter had wanted to send to her, and rejected any the scale proved false.  Her virtue she wrapped around her like a cloak, her rigidity she shed like a snakeskin.  She pulled on shoes of common sense, closed a belt of logic around her waist, and smiled as she clasped taste like a necklace around her throat.  Self-doubt and fear fell like cast off clothes at her feet.  Her sword was anger bright and gleaming, her shield courage stiff and strong, but she dropped the gauntlets of bitterness, leaving her hands bare but for a ring of truth.  He had called her a warrior, once, and rightly so.  So she kept the trappings of her trade, but ground the badge to dust under her heel.

            In her bag she packed the memories that measured up… her father peeling oranges, Crawford’s face in the back of the hall on graduation day, drinking sour mash and Coke with Ardelia, the smell of fleece, the embrace of Catherine and Ruth Martin, the burn of gunpowder in her cheek, the simultaneous caress of a file and a finger.  She kept packing, trying to evenly distribute the weight… Krendler’s voice hot and humid in her ear, the feeling in her gut when she read copperplate script, the sound of her Mustang’s engine on the Maryland highway.  Still the scales tipped, first one way, then another.  Finally, she sighed, and lay the screaming of the lambs on the top.  The scales balanced then, perfectly.

            She opened her eyes.  Cooper sat silently across the desk from her.  Stewart was at his side.  Her eyes were bright with anticipation.

            “Cattleya labiata caerulea,” she said breathlessly.  Starling raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

            “It’s an orchid,” Stewart continued.  “It only grows in the southeastern part of Brazil.  Its pollen was all over the letter.  They are exported, but not much.  It’s not a very common flower.”

            Starling felt excitement building like a cathedral in her belly.  She turned to Cooper.  “What about your bird?”

            “Oh, it was the song of a flycatcher.  I heard it while I was on a little vacation recently.”  He winked at Starling slowly, and she nodded to show she understood.  “Pitangus sulphuratus.  Commonly known as the great kiskadee.  Or, in Portuguese, bem-te-vi.”

            “That’s a rather odd sounding name.”

            “It’s what the call sounds like, what they think it’s saying.”

            “What does it mean?”

            “Bem-te-vi?  In Brazil, it means glad to see you.”

            Starling heard bells ring in her cathedral.

 

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Lecter took a walk to avoid the temptation of his laptop.  The screen glowed at him like a lighthouse flashing on a dark and dangerous coast.  He tried to recall the exact moment in which Clarice Starling had become the pole star of his life, and could not.  It seemed as if she had always been there in the foyer of his memory palace, a graceful presence in that complex abode.  During his unfortunate incarceration in Baltimore, she had been a welcome diversion from the tedium of life with Chilton and fodder for conversations with Barney, but he had not really felt anything more for her than a tolerance bought with her respect and a passing fancy paid for with her unremitting honesty.

            He had started to appreciate her in Memphis, had begun to see the form lying in wait under the marble, aching for a sculptor’s hand to release it from its own prison of stone.  He recognized a ruthlessness in her, a drive that was familiar.  Some stars that were the same.  And a purity that was slowly being corrupted.  She was as close to an angel as he imagined existed in this world.  A death angel, to be sure, he laughed, remembering the Tattler’s surprisingly accurate brand.  But would he want any other kind?

            While he was strolling and thinking, his feet had turned of their own accord and he found himself back at the hotel.  It must have been sometime at the farm, he mused, when he decided to become her salvation, her savior from the life that was strangling her more with every passing day.  She had not broken free from the marble on her own.  She needed someone, and he was the only person even aware of her plight.  As she had been the only one who knew that he was trapped.  Quid pro quo, the answer obviously yes instead of no, he had planned to take for himself the honor of assisting her.  But even then, it had been more a courtesy than a life’s mission.

            His legs continued to move, carrying themselves up the stairs without conscious input.  And at the lake house, when she sat at his table and watched him eat her enemy, she did not run, did not even turn her head away, he knew he loved her.  And when she clamped steel around his wrist, he knew he would have her someday, one way or another.  Depending on circumstance, it might be a reward or a punishment, but he would have her.

            He slid the keycard in his door, still absorbed in his thoughts.  It must have been while he was running, while he was preoccupied with the details of his escape, that she had caused this sea change in his heart, this new and glorious sensation of caring about the existence of another person.  He remembered the pain he’d felt while on the plane, unable to be soothed by the comfortable first class seat or the mediocre wine the airline provided.  The gravity he had experienced, with so much force he was amazed that the jet was able to lift from the runway.  So strong was the bond that he had not been able to break it, not even when he used his lens of perception and his venomous insults on himself.  He had been afraid then for the first time in years, aware that as long as Starling lived, his control over himself could never be quite complete.

            It was a curious sort of freedom, wrapped in chains, he reflected, as his body sat down on the couch in front of the laptop.  He noticed then for the first time his location, and smiled at his body’s betrayal.  It does not do to forget the power of the subconscious, and he allowed himself to log on to the Tattler’s website.

 

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            “So, what do we do now?” asked Stewart, leaning forward in her chair.

            Good question, thought Starling.  First, I need to get your eager little butt off my tail.  “I need you two to do some research on southeastern Brazil… the cultural hubs and the major centers of commerce and such.  Find out all you can about likely places he might be.  I’d also like a brief report on any unsolved murders that look interesting.”  She caught Cooper’s eye.  “Watson, you know my methods,” she couldn’t resist saying.

            Cooper just looked right back at her.  “Do you have any idea how many people are in southeastern Brazil?”

            “Gee, um, I don’t know exactly, how about a lot?  It doesn’t really matter, though.”

            Stewart’s mouth was gaping.  “Why doesn’t it matter?”

            “Because no matter how large a given society is, there is always a small segment “Because no matter how large a given society is, there is always a small segment that rises to the top.  The crème de la crème, so to speak.  And Hannibal Lecter lurks around that crowd like a cat in a dairy.  I really couldn’t care less how many millions of people live in the shantytowns and plantations.  He’s attracted to old money and a certain style.  Depend on it.”

            Amanda got up slowly, a lugubrious expression on her face.  “This is going to take forever.”

            I know, thought Starling silently.  “Well, maybe we’ll get another hint in the mail before too long.”

            Stewart’s face brightened at the reminder of her success.  “You’re right.  We can’t just sit around until then.”

            Good girl.  “Okay, get to work,” said Starling in a mock growl.  “You too, Cooper.”

            He raised an eyebrow at her.  Realizing she wanted her privacy, he got up and followed Amanda out.  He paused for a moment at the door.  “They’ll be watching the papers, Clarice.  Stewart can’t keep this stuff totally secret in the lab.  Don’t get too showy.”  Like you did the last time, he thought, though he was fairly certain he was the only one to have spotted her reply.

            “Okay, Mom, I’ll restrain myself,” said Starling, laughing as he left.

            She logged on to the Tattler site, her mind racing with alternatives.  Annabelle Chirt?  No, too obvious, someone would notice an anagram of his full name.  And Cooper certainly would.  She needed to find a private language, something that did not rely on logic to be understood.  She cast the net of her mind wide, and drew in an image… the knife in his teeth.  It was a Harpy, an excellent and obviously multipurpose fishing knife.  She grinned as she thought of the mythological creature, hurling shit and insults on those below.  Though Harpies were always female… and far too disgusting.  No class.

            Try again.  Aha.  Perhaps this would work.

 

“To my unexpected guest,

 

            You left in such a hurry that I never got to apologize for my confusion during dinner.  I made such a mess of it all, I felt I had to go back to my cleaning cart and get some things to tidy up.  I hope you can forgive me.  I feel so badly about it.

            I’ll be leaving soon, this place doesn’t hold me like it once did.  I hope you see this ad, since I don’t know your address or even your name.

 

Your chambermaid,

Birdie”

 

            Not great literature, and not even that plausible, but she hoped that even if it did ring false, there was no way of connecting it to Lecter.  It was certainly more circumspect than her first attempt.  And no one in the Bureau would believe that Clarice Starling would ever refer to herself as a chambermaid, not for any reason.  Hopefully, that would be enough.

 

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            Lecter forced himself to breathe normally as he slogged through acres of poorly written sentimentality.  It only took a few minutes, but the time seemed interminable until he happened upon the needle in the haystack.  A picture of Starling in a French maid’s outfit flashed through his mind, and he expanded the image with relish.  He knew in life the garb would look impossibly wrong as her demeanor would never follow suit, but in his mind she was at once demure and sexy, submissively bending over a pile of crisp folded linens, her cleavage revealed by the low scoop neck.  Her skirt was barely a ruffle, puffed out by layers of short lace underneath, and fishnet stockings sheathed her lean legs.  Upon her feet she wore the Gucci shoes he had himself once placed on them.  Her hair was done up in a French twist, and a few tendrils came down to softly frame her face.  His breath caught in his throat, and he reached for his sketchpad.

            As he drew he pondered her message, wishing he could have heard it from her lips.  The need for concealment unavoidably altered the content and shaded the answers. Ah, well, soon enough she would be here.  That much, at least, was clear.  She just needs to know where to go.

            A sliver of uncertainty pierced him as he looked upon his completed picture.  This is all or nothing, he told himself.  I know it, but I need to make very sure she knows it too.  There will be no escapes, no to-be-continued cliffhangers in this endgame.  She must know the rules without question.

            So he took a fresh sheet and started to sketch again, a famous figure with Starling’s face.  As he the pencil scratched on the paper, he smelled sea air, but not the fragrant eddies that billowed the curtains of his windows.  No, this was a harsher, colder wind in a far-off land.  An unforgiving and distant sun illuminated the gray waters of the harbor and the rocks upon the shore.  It had been years since he had been to Copenhagen, but he captured every detail perfectly.

            A short note and Starling’s therapy would be complete.  His hands shook a little as he wrapped up the drawings and readied the thin package.  Now he only had to decide how best to lead her to him.