Thomas Harris - Hannibal Rising

This boy killed Dortlich. Milko recalled that Dortlich, with a crowbar up his sleeve, had once chipped his own tooth when he tried to light a cigarette. "Scheisskopf, you should have come out with the rest of us," he said to Dortlich, wherever he was, Hell probably.

Milko carried the black ladder, along with a lunch bucket for cover, across the street and into the shelter of the hedges beside the medical school. He put his foot on the bottom rung and muttered, "Fuck the farm." It had been his mantra in action since he ran away from home at twelve.

Hannibal completed the blue, venous injections and sketched his work in colored pencil at a drawing board beside the body, referring now and then to the lung preserved in a jar of alcohol. Some papers clipped to the board fluttered slightly in a draft and settled again. Hannibal looked up from his work, looked down the corridor in the direction of the draft, then finished coloring a vein.

Milko closed the window of the anatomy museum behind him, slipped off his boots and, in his socks, crept between the glass cases. He moved along the row of the digestive system, and paused near an enormous pair of clubbed feet in a jar. There was just enough light to move. Wouldn't want to shoot in here, splash this crap everywhere. He turned up his collar against the draft on the back of his neck. Bit by bit he edged his face into the corridor, looking across the bridge of his nose so his ear was not exposed.

Above thesketchboard, Hannibal 's nostrils opened wide and the work light reflected redly in his eyes.

Looking down the corridor and through the laboratory door, Milko could see Hannibal 's back as he worked around the corpse with his big hypodermic of dye. It was a bit far to shoot, as the silencer blocked the pistol's sights. Didn't want to wing him and have to chase him around, knocking things over. God knows what would splash on you, some of these nasty fluids.

Milko made the slight adjustment of the heart that we make before we kill.

Hannibal went out of sight and Milko could only see his hand on the drawing board, sketching, sketching, making a small erasure.

Abruptly, Hannibal put down his pen, came to the corridor and turned on the light. Milko ducked back into the museum, then the light went off again. Milko peered around the door frame. Hannibal was working over the draped body.

Milko heard the autopsy saw. When he looked again Hannibal was out of sight. Drawing again. Fuck this. Walk in there and shoot him. Tell him say hello to Dortlich when he gets to Hell. Down the corridor on long strides in his socks, silent on the stone floor, watching the hand on the drawing board, Milko raised the pistol and stepped through the door and saw the hand and sleeve, the lab coat piled on the chair-where is the rest of him-and Hannibal stepped close behind Milko and sank the hypodermic full of alcohol into the side ofMilko's neck, catching him as his legs gave way and his eyes rolled up, easing him to the floor.

First things first. Hannibal put the corpse's hand back in place and tacked it on with a few fast stitches in the skin. "Sorry," he said to his subject. "I'll include thanks in your note."

Burning, coughing, cold onMilko's face now as he came to consciousness, the room swimming and then settling down. He started to lick his lips, and spit. Water pouring over his face.

Hannibal set his pitcher of cold water on the edge of the cadaver tank and sat down in a conversational attitude. Milko wore the chain cadaver harness. He was submerged up to his neck in formalin solution in the tank. The other occupants crowded close around him, regarded him with eyes gone cloudy in embalming fluid, and he shrugged their shriveled hands away.

Hannibal examinedMilko's wallet. He took from his own pocket a dog tag and placed it besideMilko's ID card on the rim of the tank.

"ZigmasMilko. Good evening."

Milko coughed and wheezed. "We talked about it. I brought you money. A settlement. We want you to have the money. I brought it. Let me take you to it."

"That sounds like a superior plan. You killed so many, Milko. So many more than these. Do you feel them in the tank around you? There by your foot, that's a child from a fire. Older than my sister, and partly cooked."

"I don't know what you want."

Hannibal pulled on a rubber glove. "To hear what you have to say about eating my sister."

"I did not."

Hannibal pressed Milko under the surface of the embalming fluid. After a long moment, he seized the chain tether and pulled him up again, poured water in his face, flushing his eyes.

"Don't say that again," Hannibal said.

"We all felt badly, so badly," Milko said as soon as he could talk.

"Freezing hands and rotting feet. Whatever we did, we did it to live.

Grutas was quick, she never-we kept you alive, we-"

"Where is Grutas?"

"If I tell you, will you let me take you to the money? It's a lot, in dollars. There is a lot more money too, we could blackmail them with what I know, with your evidence."

"Where is Grentz?"

" Canada."

"Correct. The truth for once. Where is Grutas?"

"He has a house nearMilly-le-Foret."

"What is his name now?"

"He does business asSatrug, Inc."

"Did he sell my pictures?"

"Once, to buy a lot of morphine, no more. We can get them back."

"Have you tried the food at Kolnas' restaurant? The sundaes aren't bad."

"I have the money in the truck."

"Last words? A valedictory?"

Milko opened his mouth to speak and Hannibal put the heavy cover down with a clang. Less than an inch of air remained between the cover and the surface of the embalming fluid. He left the room, Milko bumping against the lid like a lobster in a pot. He closed the door behind him, rubber seals squealing against the paint.

Inspector Popil stood beside his worktable, looking at his sketch.

Hannibal reached for the cord and switched on the big vent fan and it started with a clatter.

Popil looked up at the sound of the fan. Hannibal did not know what else he had heard. Milko's gun was between the cadaver's feet, underneath the sheet.

"Inspector Popil." Hannibal picked up a syringe of dye and made an injection. "If you'll excuse me just a moment, I need to use this before it hardens again."

"You killed Dortlich in your family's woods."

Hannibal 's face did not change. He wiped the tip of the needle.

"His face was eaten," Popil said.

"I would suspect the ravens. Those woods are rife with them. They were at the dog's dish whenever he turned his back."

"Ravens who made a shish kabob."

"Did you mention that to Lady Murasaki?"

"No. Cannibalism-it happened on the Eastern Front, and more than once when you were a child." Popil turned his back on Hannibal, watching him in the glass front of a cabinet. "But you know that, don't you? You were there. And you were in Lithuania four days ago. You went in on a legitimate visa and you came out another way. How?" Popil did not wait for an answer. "I'll tell you how, you bought papers through a con atFresnes, and that is a felony."

In the tank room the heavy lid rose slightly andMilko's fingers appeared under the edge. He pursed his lips against the lid, sucking for the quarter-inch of air, a wavelet over his face choked him, he pressed his face to the crack at the edge of the lid and sucked in a choking breath.

In the anatomy lab, looking at Popil's back, Hannibal leaned some weight onto his subject's lung, producing a satisfactory gasp and gurgle.

"Sorry," he said. "They do that." He turned up the Bunsen burner underneath a retort to magnify the bubbling.

"That drawing is not the face of your subject. It is the face of Vladis Grutas. Like the ones in your room. Did you kill Grutas too?"

"Absolutely not."

"Have you found him?"