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

Chapter 42

The identification of Dr. Hannibal Lecter as the murderer of Rinaldo Pazzi gave you something serious to do, thank God. You became the de facto low-level liaison between the FBI and the Italian authorities. It was good to make a sustained effort at one task: your world has changed since the drug raid shoot-out. You and the other survivors of the Feliciana Fish Market were kept in a kind of administrative purgatory pending a Department of justice report to a minor house Judiciary Subcommittee.

After finding the Lecter X-ray, you had marked the time as a highly qualified temporary, filling in at the National Police Academy, Quantico, for instructors who were ill or on vacation through the fall and winter, Washington was obsessed with a scandal in the White House. The frothing reformers used more saliva than did the sad little sin, and the President of the United States publicly ate more than his portion of ordure trying to avoid impeachment.

In this circus, the small matter of the Feliciana Fish Market Massacre was pushed aside.

Each day, inside you a grim knowledge grew: The federal service would never be the same for you again. You were marked. Your coworkers had caution in their faces when they dealt with you, as though you had something contagious. You were young enough for this behavior's to surprise and disappoint you.

It was good to be busy - requests from the Italians for information about Hannibal Lecter were pouring into Behavioral Science, usually in duplicate - one copy being forwarded by the State Department. And you replied with a will, stoking the fax lines and E-mailing Lecter files. You were surprised at how much the peripheral material had scattered over the seven years since the doctor's escape.

Your small cubicle in the basement at Behavioral Science was overflowing with paper, inky faxes from Italy, copies of the Italian papers.

What could you send the Italians that would be of value? The item they seized on was the single Questura computer query to the Lecter VICAP file at Quantico a few days before the Pazzi's death. The Italian press resurrected Pazzi's reputation with it, claiming he was working in secret to capture Dr. Lecter and reclaim his honor.

On the other hand, you wondered, what information from the Pazzi crime could be useful here, in case the Doctor returned to the United States? Jack Crawford was not in the office much to advise you. He was in court a lot, and as his retirement approached he was deposed in a lot of open cases.

He took more and more sick days, and when he was in the office he seemed increasingly distant.

The thought of not having his counsel gave you flashed of panic.

In your years at the FBI, you had seen a great deal. You knew that if Dr. Lecter killed again in the United States, the trumpets of flatulence would sound in Congress, an enormous roar of second-guessing would go up from Justice, and the Catch-Me-Fuck-Me would begin in earnest. Customs and border Patrol would catch it first for letting him in.

The local jurisdiction where the crime occurred would demand everything relating to Lecter and the FBI effort would center around the local line bureau. Then, when the Doctor did it again someplace else, everything would move.

If he were caught, the authorities would fight for credit like bears around a bloody seal.

Your business was to prepare for the eventuality of his coming, whether he ever came or not, putting aside all the weary knowledge of what would happen around the investigation.