Starling put on her evidence gloves with a tingling sensation in her fingertips.  She would have her new subordinates analyze this package, not so much to uncover anything useful as to see what they were capable of, and she did not want to ruin anything for them.  She said that to herself over and over, but it was of little use.  Deep inside, she knew the real reason she was pulling on hand condoms.  It was fear.  Lecter could touch her soul intimately, effortlessly, and she wanted as many barriers between her and his mesmerizing power as possible.

            She tugged on the ribbons, which parted with ease.  She had decided to forgo the fluoroscope.  She had no doubt that Lecter wanted to hurt her somehow, but knew that if physical pain were his desire, he would be unable to resist inflicting it in person.  Her pocketknife sliced through the tape, and she folded the thick silver wrapping paper as she removed it.  She waved it slowly under her nose.  No scent.  She pulled out the tab on the box’s lid and lifted it gently.  A cerulean blue envelope lay nestled atop a swath of navy blue tissue paper.  Belatedly she remembered the Polaroid in her desk drawer.  I should be getting film on this, she thought.  Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

            The crimson of the wax seal was exactly the same color as his lips, she reflected as her blade worked carefully under it.  Finally it popped loose, intact, and she slid the letter out.  Still no scent.  Her knees felt weak, her vision darkened as she unfolded the paper.  Dropping into her chair, she began to read.

            The next sound in the room was the dull thunk of her pocketknife blade embedding itself in the cork message board by the door.  She spun her chair away from the desk and kicked the wall behind her.  Her eyes were dark with anger, bright with unshed tears.  The screaming in her mind, the sound that never, ever really went away, reached a new level of volume, sheer decibels of pain.  His words were at once bullets and benediction to her ravaged soul.  Like antiseptic in a wound, like…

            Like a spanking for a naughty girl, she thought.  Damn.  What fascinating fathers I have had, she mused, the tears now spilling down her cheeks in earnest.  Jack Crawford throws me to the wolves, tossing me a bone now and then.  My own father leaves me to the tender mercies of the world courtesy of a couple of hicks and a short-shucked shotgun.  But Lecter…  she slammed the door hard on that thought.

            She lifted the letter again.  “Battered woman’s syndrome.”  She thought of the women she had seen, their eternal refrain… “this time it will be different.”  It’s not like that, she told herself.  But she knew that was a lie.  She thought she had wrought so well, back in her bedroom, pulling up all her roots and cocooning them in a shell of emptiness.  Now she knew that she had only succeeded in pulling that veil over her own eyes, masking her own intentions from her conscious awareness.  She thought she had come back to the Bureau on her own.  Now she knew she had come back because she was afraid to go anywhere else.  It was the only family she knew, no matter how dysfunctional.  What else had she hidden under that shroud?

            She paused then; aware that if she continued reading she would have to think of things she longed to forget.  She would need to destroy her carefully constructed veil and see herself honestly and truly.  The way only one other person ever had.  If she went on now, there was no turning back.  She wondered for a moment if she might go mad.  Then she wondered if she already had.  She laughed a little, for the first time since she saw the package, and plunged in.

            How did I feel when I saw Krendler?  She sank back into her chair, closing her eyes and summoning the sensations of that evening to mind.  She recalled smells so rich one could eat them, the caress of silk on her skin, the way Lecter moved around the table, commanding grace and attention.  She focused on her stomach, on her throat, on the throb of blood in her temples and the rush of it in her ears.  She voiced the answer aloud in a low murmur.

“I was sick, but I was sicker yet that I was not more sick.  It all seemed so appropriate, so destined…  I tried to pretend I was watching a movie, but it was so real, so hypervivid…  the knowledge that it was real excited me.  Yes, Dr. Lecter, the flush on my cheeks was excitement.  I don’t think it was envy, I don’t remember that.  Lust?  No, not then, not until…”

She opened her eyes then, and her heart ached.  “I can’t go there yet, I can’t do it,” she whispered.  “My daddy?  My daddy would be ashamed, that’s what he’d be.  Ashamed.  I can’t!” she wailed like a child, and sank her head into her hands.

That was how Ardelia found her, when she walked in the office after knocking for five minutes with no reply.

 

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            “What the hell?  Clarice?  Oh…” trailed Mapp as she took in the scene in Starling’s office.  She didn’t need to be the world’s foremost expert on Hannibal Lecter to read the import of the ribbons and the tears.

            “Shit, Starling, what did that twisted fuck send you this time?”

            Clarice raised her head and looked at her best friend, the one person in the world she wanted to see least at this moment.  “Ardelia,” she rasped, “if you love me you’ll leave, right now, no questions asked.”

            “Now listen, Clarice, I am not going to leave you alone right now.  No matter what you think you need.”

            “Please, oh, please, just… just go.”  Starling’s eyes held a pleading like Mapp had never seen before.

            Ardelia realized in that moment that she had never known Clarice Starling, and that she probably never really would.  She had been Starling’s friend and confidante for years, yet Hannibal Lecter had, with only words on a page, been able to plumb to depths of Clarice’s soul that Ardelia had never imagined existed.  She sighed then, aware that she was in the presence of something remarkable, something that brooked no opposition. 

“Just be careful, girlfriend.  Don’t get yourself hurt.”  The words sounded ridiculous even as she spoke them.

Starling smiled then, just a little.  “I’ll try, Ardelia.  I love you.  Thanks.”

“Come home later, I’ll make you some tea.”

The only reply she got was a nod.  Mapp turned and left the office, worried and a little jealous all at once.

            Clarice breathed a sign of relief.  If anyone could understand this, it certainly wasn’t Ardelia Mapp, she thought.  As good a friend as Ardelia was, this was out of her league.  Hell, it’s out of my league.  But not for long, not if I can help it.

            She looked down at the desk again, to the navy blue paper still concealing the “items” that supposedly would assist her “therapy.”  She laughed sharply.  This was to therapy as an AK-47 was to a water pistol.  She gathered the tatters of her composure around her and tore the paper aside.  She saw herself then, fractured in the glass like a surreal jigsaw puzzle.  She smelled his blood, sharp and metallic in her nostrils.  She took in the pink plastic frame, and her eyes jumped automatically to her shoes.  I think he’s gone a little beyond footwear here, a part of her thought, amused.  This is how he sees me.  Interesting.  She thought back to that bizarre feast, when he had taunted her with her incorruptibility.  “All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror.”  So he had given her one.  A way to see herself, through his eyes.  Broken.

            She resisted the impulse to pick up the mirror and cradle it to her chest.  She knew she would spend hours gazing into its depths, but not yet.  Her eyes fell on the stiff folded paper next to the mirror.  She lifted it and shook it out.  She caught her breath at the beauty of the map of the heavens, the night sky.  Involuntarily her mind leaped to summer evenings long ago, lying in the back of her father’s pickup, using a flashlight covered in red cellophane to pick out the constellations.  She felt her father’s arm around her shoulders as he showed her the glories of the Milky Way and the dance of the Zodiac.  She found the inscription and wondered at its perfect symmetry to her state of mind.  Where am I, Doctor?  Where are you?  I only wish I knew.  But you are right, as always, and I’ve always known it though barely believed it – some of our stars are the same.

            She glanced at her watch.  4:55.  Just enough time to catch someone at the personals desk at the Tattler.  There were matters she wished to discuss, and a question she needed answered before she would let herself go on.

 

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            Lecter sat on his balcony, enjoying his afternoon cafezinho and watching the waves roll in.  The last two days had been marvelously relaxing, a treat after the strain he’d been under.  Good food, good wine, culture and freedom had combined to give him a pensive yet playful mood.  She should have received his gift yesterday, fairly early, if his calculations were correct.  There could be a message waiting for him already, if she were quick to act.

            He smiled at his impatience, remembering that she’d never answered before.  Though he gave himself higher odds this time around.  He had thrown an arsenal at her, and if he knew her half as well as he believed he did, she would be in the throes of pain right now.  He pictured her in his head, how her glorious face would look, jagged in the mirror, twisted in revelation.  Oh, he wanted to be there, a fly on her wall…

            But on the whole, he had to admit, things had worked out rather better than his original plan.  Certainly he would have had more control if she were at his disposal, in the possession of his drugs and his voice, a ripe berry waiting to be squeezed.  But this way was more challenging, more… fun, with the spice of chance and uncertainty.  And he wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable banality and ugliness along the way… her friend Ardelia could have the joy of that.  When she came to him, she would be whole and perfect.  Though what exactly she would be, he could scarcely allow himself to imagine.

            He held himself there, waiting and watching the sea, until he felt drunk and giddy with anticipation.  Only then, at the height of his curiosity, did he allow himself to enter the suite and switch on the laptop.  His dark eyes moved like lasers over the pages, scanning and discarding until… ah, she had been in a hurry.  But, clever, for all of that.  The ad he read was not for A. A. Aaron – he had known she would pick up on his “of course,” and avoid the predictable.  Her charade was a little clumsy, but then, she had felt pressed for time, he was sure of it now.

 

“Nora A. –

You have all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I admit, but do you think you can put me together again?  I’ll tell you this.  Excitement.  I don’t know.  I can’t know.  Ashamed.  Loud.  You’re right about the Huntress.  I used to be the Virgin.  Now I feel like the Fishes.

Quid pro quo.  What moves you to forgive?

 

C.”

 

            A band of tension Lecter had not known existed eased from around his chest.  A broad smile broke out across his face.  “That’s my girl.”
            Clarice stayed out late that night, watching the stars in the park.  She lay on a blanket, face upturned to the heavens, letting the moonlight and starshine pour into her.  She felt tension stream down into the cool ground as she filled with a purer energy than the fire that had fueled her ever since she saw Mason’s men take Lecter from the parking lot.  Now I know where I am… I’m right here, she thought.  But where am I going?

            She felt a pull through the earth, a magnetism that could not be denied.  Lecter.  She remembered telling Barney that she thought of the Doctor at least thirty seconds of every day.  Well, it was true.  No matter that the actual figure was more like thirty minutes of every hour.  She sat up and stretched.  So, I’m still after him, she mused.  I guess I can figure out what I want to do with him when I get there.

            A warning then, like a beacon in her mind.  No, that didn’t work out so well last time, did it?  There’s no urgency now, no one needs to be saved.  Well, no one except me.  And I can wait.  There’s time enough to be sure.  Play his game, Starling, you know you can.

            She glanced down at her watch, glowing blue green in the dark.  Ardelia will be in bed by now.  It’s time to go home.

 

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            Clarice slept well, for once, and if she dreamt she did not remember it upon waking.  She pulled on her clothes, a gray blouse and slim black slacks, and was out of the duplex early.  She wanted to be in the dungeon and waiting when her new assistants arrived.

            She was sitting at her desk, hidden behind her computer monitor, earphones on, when they came in.  Their faces were a study.  Amanda Stewart, the short, plump blond, looked as excited as a kid getting a pony ride.  Dale Cooper, on the other hand, wore the resentful expression of a child being taken, screaming, out of a toy store.  His blue eyes raced around the room, never blinking as he assessed the gruesome decorations on the walls.  They had not seen her yet.  She recalled the trick she had pulled on Krendler, and rejected it… she wanted them on her side.

            She took off the earphones and stood up.  Stewart jumped.  Starling noted with interest that Cooper did not.  “Hello.  I’m Clarice Starling.  Nice to have you here.  Special Agent Cooper, I believe we’ve met once before?”  She arched one eyebrow.

            He didn’t flinch.  “Yes, we have.”

            “And Agent Stewart… you come highly recommended.  Please, sit down.”

            As they took their places, she continued.  “I’m sure that Noonan has filled you in on this assignment.  We are here to locate Dr. Hannibal Lecter.  Take a quick look around.  Lecter is possibly the most dangerous fugitive in existence.  Because of this, and because of events surrounding the last investigation, I’m going to lay down a few ground rules.  You two will report to me and only to me.  If you discover a lead, you will not take action until you have cleared it with me first.  I don’t care if he is standing across the room from you, you will make no move to apprehend until I am aware of the situation.  You are much more useful to me alive than dead, and I assure you that is what you will be if you approach Lecter on your own.  I repeat, you will not approach Lecter in any way without my express approval.  Is that clear?”

            Stewart nodded eagerly.  Cooper remained still until he caught Starling’s eye.  He held her gaze for a minute.  She could not read the expression in his face when he nodded.

            Starling got up and moved to a table she had set up across the room.  She pulled aside a screen to reveal the tableau she had prepared.  The box sat in the center of the table, the lid open, revealing the envelope inside.  “I received this yesterday.  I know it is from Lecter.  Agent Stewart, I would like you to be certain of that for yourself.  Please take it to the lab and perform the analysis personally.  Come back with a report on everything you find.  You can think of it as a test, if you like.”  Starling smiled then, and couldn’t help herself.  She looked Stewart straight on until the girl began to squirm.  “Thrill me with your acumen.”

            She tossed a pair of evidence gloves in Stewart’s lap.  “Okay, get going.”

The girl got up slowly, her eyes rounded in wonder.  She picked up the box gingerly and looked at Starling.  She spoke up then, in a soft Midwestern twang.  “Thank you, Special Agent Starling.  Thanks for picking me for this.”

Starling returned the look, and felt a glimmer of kinship.  “Just call me Starling.”

Stewart smiled and left the office, carrying her task as if it were the Holy Grail.

Starling went back to the desk and sat down.  “Cooper.”

Their eyes met again.  He said nothing.

“I can tell you don’t want to be here.  What I don’t know is why.”  She held up his personnel file.  “Ten years ago you were a rising star.  You did some brilliant work.  You had everything going for you.  You had an insight, a way of seeing that people envied.  Folks were calling you the next Will Graham.  Then you went to a little town called Twin Peaks.  Caught a serial killer.  After that, you turned down every plum assignment they wanted to give you.  You became… ordinary.  By the book, even, when everyone knows you used to have an off the charts weird way of doing things.  I need to know what happened there.”

His face was handsome, she reflected in the long moment of silence that followed.  But there’s a look around his eyes, something…  she realized what it was as soon as he spoke.

“You should know, Starling.  It’s happened to you, too.”

His eyes were the same as the ones she saw in the mirror every day.

“When you look into the dark, the dark looks into you.  And sometimes it likes what it sees.”

Starling felt her heart begin to beat a little faster.  Was this possible?  She had not thought there could be one person on earth, not to mention the Bureau, who could have the faintest idea what she had been through.

He kept speaking, and though his face did not change, she could see the struggle within.  “I had tried to put this behind me.  I had tried, Special Agent Starling, to make myself a life again.  I wish you had done the same.  You will find no good on this path you take.”

A flash of anger cut through the rapport she’d been feeling.  “Why?  You don’t think I can succeed where you failed?

            “I’m afraid you will.”

            She sat back into her chair then, and spread her hands out, palms up, on her lap.  “Help me, Cooper.  I think we can learn something from each other.”

            “Do I want to know what you know?”

            She leaned forward, closing the distance between them.  “You’ve been asleep too long.  It’s time to wake up now.  This could help you, too.  You said you’ve tried to make a life for yourself.  Do you think you’ve succeeded in that?”

            He laughed then, ruefully, the first emotion she had seen him betray.  “No, you’re right about that.”  His eyes moved over her face, searching.  They fell on her cheek.  “When did you get that gunpowder in your skin?”

            “When I shot Buffalo Bill.”

            “It’s in the position the French call ‘courage’, did you know that?”

            “Actually, I did.”

            “I hope you have some to spare for me.”

            “Just a loan.  We’ll get your own back.”

            He smiled stiffly.  “And we’ll find your fiend, Starling.  If that’s really what you want.”

            Her eyes glittered like Ceylon sapphires.  “Yes.  That’s one of the things I know.”

            “Let’s go get some coffee.”

            They walked together out of the dungeon, out into the light.  They shared a laugh as each fumbled for sunglasses in the glare of the late morning sun.  As they strolled to a nearby café, they talked of inconsequentials, played the ‘do you know so-and-so’ game, and took the first steps towards a wary camaraderie.  At the trendy coffeehouse, Starling got a cappuccino with a shot of almond syrup.  She laughed as Cooper placed his order.

            “I’ll have a cup of coffee, black.”

            The barrista, a girl with shocking pink hair and a large nose ring, stared at him.  “Just a cup of coffee, black?” she echoed.

            “Black as midnight on a moonless night.  And do you have any pie?”

            “Umm, okay, yeah.  We’ve got a Black Forest torte, a seven-layer Chocolate Inferno cake, a…”

            “I just want some pie.  Do you have cherry pie?”

            “I don’t think so.”

            “Then just the coffee, please.”

            The barrista looked dazed as she rang him up.  They found a booth in a corner, fairly secluded from the main throng of traffic.  Cooper sipped his coffee and grimaced.  “In this day and age it is impossible to get a really good cup of coffee in a town with more than ten thousand inhabitants,” he complained.

            Starling smiled.  “I need to ask you something.”

            “Shoot.”

            “What happened to your courage?”

            All traces of a light mood vanished.  Cooper appeared to have found something very interesting in his coffee cup.  Starling sat silently, her eyes never leaving his face.

            “I don’t know how much of this you’re going to believe.  If you want to have me committed, go ahead.  I often think I should be.”

            He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet.  From the very standard black leather trifold, he withdrew two small pictures and passed them to Starling.  One was the photo of a beautiful young girl in a tiara.  The other was of the same girl, her porcelain skin now blue and gritty, wrapped in a sheet of clear plastic.

            “Her name was Laura Palmer.”

            He told her the whole fantastic tale then, the story of the homecoming queen and her coke habit, the ancient darkness lurking in the woods, the possession of Laura’s father by the spirit, the incest and abuse, the drugs and the sex, the battle of good and evil for the soul of one young girl.

            Starling was fascinated as he talked of his meditations, the visions and dreams he’d had, the letters under the fingernails of the victims, the way he’d discovered the identity of the killer.  When he finished though, she knew he’d left something out.

            “That’s all very interesting, Cooper, but your courage seemed quite equal to the task.  What else happened?”

            Cooper’s eyes unfocused.  Starling could tell his mind was far from the little caffeine bar.  “I had a mentor in the Bureau.  An agent named Windom Earle.  He… well, to make a long story short, he became evil, or insane, or both.  He toyed with people’s lives, played games with my head.  We were all pieces on his chessboard, and he used us with abandon.  I was white to his black.  He endangered my queen… I had to sacrifice myself to save her.  He took her to the Black Lodge… a spiritual birthplace of evil.  Was it a real place?  I don’t know… I think so.  To enter the Black Lodge and come out again unscathed, one must have perfect courage.  I didn’t, but I went in anyway.  I was afraid for Annie… my queen.  I was afraid of Windom… he told me he had taught me just so we could ‘have some fun’.  He mocked my character, my supposed goodness, my incorruptibility.  In the end, I was corrupted.  I escaped, but the evil lingers on inside me.  I can see it when I look in the mirror, every day.  I’ll never be rid of it.  I can just barely control it.  It’s a war I can’t win.”

            Shock immobilized Starling.  She just sat there, staring, hearing his words ricochet off pillars of memory in her mind.

            Cooper’s eyes came up, and she was lost in the deep blue.  She saw a mist of tears covering the orbs.

            “There’s a poem, I don’t know if you know it… it’s Emily Dickinson.”  He quoted,

 

“I died for beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

 

He questioned softly why I failed?

‘For beauty,’ I replied.

‘And I for truth, -- the two are one;

We brethren are,’ he said.

 

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.”

 

            He paused.  “I don’t want you in my tomb, Starling.  But I’ll help you.  I owe it to Annie to help you.”

            He extended his hand across the table.  Starling, trembling, took it.