Fortune's Fool (Hannibal Fanfiction)

VI: Raymond Frank Kennedy

Morning came far too early for Will, who slipped in and out of feverish nightmares until he was unsure what was reality and what was fantasy. The only thing he could trust to be real was the sweat running down his body and soaking his clothes, although even that was suspect. Finally, his alarm clock went off at six-thirty. He groaned and heaved himself out of bed and into the shower. It was only a small consolation that he could rinse the sweat from his skin, since he couldn't find a comfortable temperature to set the faucet; the hot water felt scalding, and the cold water sent him into convulsing shivers. His whole body ached as if he had the flu.

Will was in a horrible mood when he got out of the shower, dressed, and knocked on the door that connected Hannibal's room to his.

"I'm going down to breakfast," he said loudly. "I want to leave here for the first crime scene around eight."

Hannibal acquiesced to meeting him downstairs for breakfast, seemingly unperturbed by his grumpiness. He was, however, perturbed by the breakfast selection, poking at the lumpy oatmeal and steering clear of the hotel's soggy-looking bacon. If Will had been in a better mood, Hannibal's thinly-disguised distaste would've amused him, but instead, it barely registered as he threw back more aspirin to curb his headache. He was happy to get out of the hotel and on the road, if only to have something to distract him.

The first crime scene was located in Metairie, a few blocks from Lafreniere Park. Will parked a block away from the crime scene so he could get a better feel for the place. The area was deceptively peaceful — plain brown one- and two-story houses, the occasional basketball hoop or swimming pool, sidewalks, old trees. Nothing out of the ordinary. The victim's house appeared no different than the rest, except for slightly longer grass in the front yard. It had been taken over by the city and unoccupied for months. Nobody wanted to buy a house where a murder had recently occurred.

Will had looked at the case files on the plane, but he stood in the driveway and scanned the first case file again anyway. The victim was a 67-year-old Caucasian male, Raymond Frank Kennedy, found in his home in August. With no living relatives except for an estranged daughter, it had taken over a week for his body to be discovered. It had decomposed substantially in the Louisiana heat, which had affected the quality of the crime scene, but the cause was clear: he'd been hacked to death with an ax.

Neither the weapon nor the culprit had been found yet. Will suspected that that had something to do with the victim himself: when police had ID-ed the body, Kennedy had shown up in the registered sex offender database as a repeat child molester. It was entirely plausible that they hadn't tried as hard as they could to find the perpetrator. As a former homicide detective — and from New Orleans, no less — Will knew that law enforcement officers were as fallible as the rest of the population. A quiet part of him didn't blame them if they had let Kennedy's death slide, even if he didn't want to admit it. Sex offenders were a special kind of sick, and child predators even more so.

Will walked slowly up the driveway to the front door. It took him a moment to register that Hannibal was following behind him. He was surprisingly quiet. There was something about Hannibal's presence that made Will less uncomfortable and jumpy than usual. Will hated looking at crime scenes by himself, but he also hated them with company. Jack's presence was always a sharp thorn in his side, taking up room and cluttering up his mind. Bystanders and police unaccustomed to Will's methods liked to stare openly and gossip. The FBI's forensics team was better, but they still gave him concerned, sidelong glances when he was trying to work. And left alone, sometimes he feared that he would lose his grasp on reality completely. Hannibal was an acceptable middle ground, an anchoring force without being distracting. He could get used to that.

Will stopped and glanced from the file to the door. "There was no sign of forced entry," he murmured. "So the victim either knew his assailant, or..."

He didn't finish his sentence, and Hannibal didn't ask him to. Will took the key out of his pocket, procured for him by the NOPD, and unlocked the door.

Inside the door was a thin entryway from which open doorways led to various rooms. It was dark throughout and devoid of furniture, with curtains drawn. The living room was to the right, while a half bathroom was on the left. Following the hallway to the back of the house led to where the dining room and the kitchen met.

Will did a full once-over following the details of the file, which were already burned into his memory. The house was one story, with one-and-a-half baths and one bedroom. The whole place felt strangely claustrophobic, and it was dusty, its aura reeking of disuse.

Will walked back into the empty dining room, which was open to the kitchen.

"He died here," he murmured to no one in particular, eyes roaming over the floor.

The crime scene crew had done a good job of cleaning the blood from the walls, but the dining table, chairs, and original flooring hadn't been salvageable. The only furniture left in the house were the kitchen appliances and the clunky washer-dryer set shoved into a crevice near the bedroom.

Hannibal stood silently by his side, apparently content to observe and listen. That served him well. Will slowly stalked around the edge of the room to where the meager backyard was accessible by a sliding glass door.

"Typical inside lock...unlocked and untampered with when the investigators arrived..." Will frowned. "Something doesn't add up."

Hannibal spoke for the first time since they'd parked. "What makes you say that?"

"You can't pick the lock of a sliding glass door when the lock's on the inside. You have to mess with the door frame or break the glass, but there's no sign of forced entry anywhere."

Will opened the case file again, more out of habit rather than necessity. Given the state of decomposition, the coroner had placed the time of death within a 24- to 36-hour window. If Will was right about the assailant, he would have scoped out the place in the daytime and attacked at night, which meant... Will abruptly shut the file, unlocked the sliding glass door, and strode down the hallway to the front door.

"Killer came in through the back," he threw over his shoulder. "Kennedy must've left his back door unlocked."

Hannibal followed him curiously. Will relocked the front door and went around the outside of the house. The backyard was separated from the neighbor's with a simple but tall wooden fence, which meant that the neighbors wouldn't have seen the assailant testing the windows and doors, even in broad daylight. Will belatedly wondered if any fingerprints would be left but immediately dismissed it. It was unlikely that fingerprints would last when exposed to months of weather.

Will breathed in deeply, closed his eyes, and laid out the information in his head. He could see everything: the killer's movements, the blood splatters and the way the dark red liquid pooled under the body, the brutal separation of flesh from muscle from bone with each swing of the ax, the careful planning and escape...

And then he was under, and in, and dear god this never got easier.

Especially since what he imagined and pieced together at crime scenes didn't disturb him anywhere near as much as they should.