Return Of The Cannibal(Hannibal x Reader)(Book 2)

Chapter 8

Behavioral science is the FBI section deals with serial murder. Down in its basement offices, the air is cool and still. Decorations with their colour wheels have tried in recent years to brighten the subterranean space. The result is no more successful than funeral home cosmetics. The section chief's office remains in the original brown and tan with the checked cafe curtains on its high windows. There, surrounded by his hellish files Jack Crawford sat writing at his desk. A knock, and Crawford looked up to a sight that pleased him - you stood in his doorway. Crawford smiled and rose from his chair. He and you often talked while standing; it was one of the tacit formalities you both had come to impose on your relationship. You guys didn't need to shake hands.

"I heard you came to the hospital," you said' "sorry I missed you." You continued. "I was just glad they let you go so fast," he said. "Tell me about your ear, is it okay?" Crawford asked "It's fine if you like cauliflower. They tell me it'll go down, most of it." You said. Your ear was covered by your hair. You did not offer to show him.

A little silence

"They had me taking the fall for the raid, Mr. Crawford. For Evelda Drumgo's death, all of it. They were like hyenas and then suddenly it stopped and they slunk away. Something drove them off." You said. "Maybe you have an angel, Y/N." Crawford said. "Maybe I do. What did it cost you, Mr. Crawford?" You asked. Crawford shook his head. "Close the door, please, Y/N." Crawford said. Crawford found a wadded Kleenex in his pocket and polished his spectacles. "I would have done it if I could. I didn't have the juice by myself. If senator Martin was still in office, you'd have some cover... They wasted John Brigham on that raid just threw him away. It would have been a shame if they wasted you like they wasted John. It felt like i was stacking you and John across a jeep." Crawford said.

Crawford's cheeks coloured and you remember his face in the sharp wind above John Brigham grave. Crawford had never talked to you about this war. "You did something, Mr. Crawford." You said. He nodded. "I did something. I don't know how glad you'll be. It's a job." Crawford said.

A job. Job was a good word in your private lexicon. It meant a specific and immediate task and it cleared the air. You never spoke if you could help it about the troubled central bureaucracy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crawford and you were like medical missionaries, with little patience for theology, each concentrating hard on the one baby before you both, knowing and not saying that god wouldn't do a goddamned thing to help. That for fifty thousand Ibo infant lives, he would not bother to send rain.

"Indirectly, Y/N, your benefactor is your recent correspondent." Crawford said. "Dr. Lecter." Crawford continued. You had a long note at Crawford's distaste for the spoken name. 'is this why I've been suddenly thinking about him and why after 10 years he's finally sent me a letter' you think to yourself. "Yes, the very same. For all this time he'd eluded us - he was away clean - and he writes you a letter. Why?" Crawford asks. You can't tell him the actual reason of why Hannibal sent you a letter. It had been ten years since Dr. Hannibal Lecter, known murderer of ten, escaped from custody in Memphis, taking five more lives in the process.

It was as though Lecter had dropped off the earth. The case remained open at the FBI and would remain open forever, or until he was caught. The same was true in Tennessee state legislation and demanded action. Whole tomes of scholarly conjecture on his mentality were available; most of it authored by psychologists who had never been exposed to the doctor in person. A few works appeared by psychiatrists he had skewered in the professional journals, who apparently felt that it was safe to come out now. Some of them said his aberrations would inevitably drive him to suicide and that it was likely he was already dead.