Chapter Text
May 23, 2014
From the moment he’d said goodbye to Alana, a drone had started up in Will’s ears. He could no longer hear his dogs barking; he only saw the lights of his house swimming in his vision. It wouldn’t be long until the agents that had come to arrest him realized he had left the house, and therefore it wouldn’t be long until they came looking for him. (You didn’t run and still looked plenty guilty, Chilton had said a few weeks ago. Look at Will now.)
Will’s skin felt hot where he’d tucked the gun into his waistband. He hadn’t planned to show up armed. Everything Hannibal needed - everything Will needed - was in the kitchen. Everything Jack needed was supposed to be outside. (No intimacy in watching SWAT take someone down. No opportunities to second-guess his resolve.) Instead, he was the man in the room, and perhaps the only one.
He should have run. He was parked down the road where no one would see him leave and no one could say he’d evaded arrest. His hands should have been on the steering wheel, his foot on the gas taking him east. (No, that was a bad idea. They’d definitely see him.)
Hannibal hadn’t called to cancel. If Jack was still roaming free, he still had an 8 p.m. reservation in Baltimore. If Jack had been arrested, he was certainly counting on Will to go.
How much did Hannibal know? Had Alana warned him? Had Prurnell?
Will’s hand went to his phone. As his fingers found Hannibal’s contact card, he felt words building up in his chest, threatening to send him flying to bits of viscera and bone. He wanted to cancel, to tell Hannibal off, to apologize. He could picture the Shrike case file now, the documents reading “Blocked call to household before agent arrival.” If he came out of this night alive - and even if he didn’t - this decision would be a line in an investigator’s notebook. Will hit the call button anyway.
He brought the phone to his ear. The line rang once. Twice. A third time. On the fourth ring, it connected.
“Hello?” The sound of Hannibal’s voice deepened the ache in Will’s chest. He took a shaky breath. He decided.
“They know,” he said. About me. About you.
Hannibal said nothing. Within seconds, his silence was replaced by a dial tone. Across from Will, the gray visage of Garret Jacob Hobbs grinned.
September 3, 2014
The last time Will had gone into retreat for this long was after he left the NOPD. He’d told his daddy that it was because of his shoulder, but the sad look he received in response showed just how much he’d been believed. It had been one of the rare times they were both in Louisiana after Will finished high school. It was in that slump that he applied to college, because if being in a career of service was not enough to overcome the wrongness he feared was intrinsic to his being — well, then, he’d just have to aim for something higher.
The difference between then and now — apart from the fact that Will had acquired two degrees in two separate slumps and didn’t see the need to go to school again — was that he could no longer blame circ*mstances beyond his control. (He’d once tried to argue that to be destructive was to be evil. The storm that gusted him out of Louisiana wasn’t evil. Hannibal, storm that he was, was getting harder to describe in such a way, even though most normal people would consider that the objective truth. Will, ever abnormal, had posited himself as one of those people delivering probes to a funnel cloud and had instead given himself over to the wind.) This was his doing, his cross to bear.
Will had spent enough time alone with his thoughts in the past three months and he couldn’t keep dipping into his rainy day fund, so he rounded Mr. Davis’ house up the street to ask if the elderly man knew anyone in need of any repairs. With lecturing and consulting out of the picture, he could ratchet up his one-off job into a more consistent one. Mr. Davis didn’t know anyone, no, but he’d keep an eye out, and shouldn’t Will be getting some sort of pension?
“I didn’t qualify for anything. Too young, not there long enough, and not on SSDI,” Will said. At this, Mr. Davis frowned.
“Don’t they have something for people injured in the line of duty?” he asked.
Will arched an eyebrow. “They didn’t have anything for me when I was wrongfully incarcerated,” he sniped.
The older man whistled lowly. “You really give everything to a job and they don’t give you a thing back, huh,” Mr. Davis said.
Will wondered if he deserved anything at this point. He grimaced. “No, I suppose they don’t.”
The older man was silent for a moment, eyes on Will’s face. He drew his eyebrows together as if he were grappling with something.
Eventually, he spoke. “You could sell. I know you ain’t been out there long, but with all that land you could pull a profit in this market. If my joints weren’t giving out, I’d put my place on the market and take the money down to Boot Key Harbor.”
Will sighed. Despite living in northern Virginia for nearly a decade, he wasn’t particularly attached to it. He liked having a place to return to, but that place didn’t have to be Wolf Trap. He’d spent the first 14 years of his life moving around and his most recent job had him on a flight every week for months. Taking off again wouldn’t mean much to him. But Will’s phone still chirped frequently with people trying to get in touch, and he saw the MSN headlines each time he opened his laptop. (Perhaps the most important witnesses in the case against Dr. Lecter can be found within the FBI. You didn’t run and still looked plenty guilty.)
“I don’t think the FBI would want me going too far,” he said.
***
Will spent the remainder of the morning pinning handwritten flyers at the library and nearby shops. Providing boat/jet ski repairs, winterization, power washes and details. $100/hr. There was bound to be at least a few people who spent Labor Day on the Potomac and needed their boats taken care of. He’d probably have good results down by National Harbor and the Wharf, too - he mentally made a note to draw up some more flyers. There was also the Chesapeake Bay, but Will felt like crossing that line would be testing fate.
The coffee shop where he posted his last flyer quietly buzzed around him. It wasn’t packed - two young people tapping away on laptops adorned with GMU stickers, an older woman sipping tea by herself, a table of friends splitting pastries, the barista behind the counter taking someone’s order. If Will let his guard down, he could easily slip into one of their heads. Maybe someone wanted to start their semester strong or was anxiously awaiting a coworker’s arrival to relieve a shift. But as Will headed for the exit, a man waiting in line swiveled his head, making eye contact with Will. Recognition flickered across the man’s face before he quickly turned away. Will drew in a breath through his nose and upped his pace, pushing the shop door open. A mechanical chime sounded overhead as he stepped out into the humidity, hands wrapped around his biceps.
He’d had years to adjust to people thinking he was strange or unstable, but that was after he’d spoken to them. Even most interactions were passable or could be chalked up to guy’s not too chatty. Even when he began working with the FBI and he’d caught the attention of Freddie Lounds and those who read her drivel, that was still a very small group of people who could form notions about him. After Hannibal, more people looked at Will with pity. With morbid curiosity. More of them looked at him with fear than after his stint in the BSHCI.
Can’t see in-ta people’s heads as much as ya think, Willy, his daddy told him once. Not everyone’s thinkin’ about’cha all the time.
Will carried that with him from adolescence to adulthood. Not everything is about me, he’d remind himself. It was easy when he could guess at what was going on with them anyway: sick parents. Bad day. Just a jerk. But things had become increasingly personal in the last year, to a dizzying degree, and now it was evident everywhere he went that people were genuinely thinking about him. Oh, how angry his father would be if Will told him he’d been wrong.
The drive home was fortunately quick. He’d check if anyone responded to his Craigslist ad and spend the rest of the day reading - he’d been eyeing a reread of Agamemnon for some time now. Buster snuffled at Will’s feet as he booted his old Compaq (the Quantico-issued MacBook had finally caught up to the fact that he was no longer an employee and locked him out), and Will ran a socked foot along the little dog’s spine. Buster had been wheezing ever since the Randall Tier attack; the vet wasn’t concerned since the injury had healed fine.
“What kind of animal did that?” the wide-eyed technician at the emergency vet had asked.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” Will had responded, fully aware it was under a tarp in his trunk.
When Will saw Buster again after being released from the hospital, he’d merely rubbed between the dog’s ears and said, “Guess we’ve got mortal wounds in common now, buddy.”
After a few minutes of clunking sounds, the startup jingle sang out from the speakers and the log-in screen appeared bit by bit in colorful stripes. Will typed in the password and watched the desktop slowly load. As he opened a browser window, he caught sight of the date on the taskbar. 12:23:45 PM 9/3/2014. It was discomfiting for a reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on - was something scheduled at Quantico today? Did he see it in an email?
It was only later once he’d retired to the couch with Agamemnon that it clicked. Oh. Abigail’s birthday was in a few days. Will stared at the words on the page before him, not processing their meaning, before he gave up and shut the book.
October 14, 2014
Will welcomed the cool breeze as it grazed his sweaty forehead. He’d wipe his face if not for the grime that covered the fronts and backs of his hands and the handkerchief tucked into his belt. Instead, his hands twitched at his sides as he watched his client pace the deck of the boat he’d just serviced.
“Everything to your liking?” Will called.
The man gave Will’s work another once over before descending to the dock. “Looks good to me,” he proclaimed, much louder than he needed to. He wore a red ball cap with the Nationals logo on it, and Will envisioned he was the type to get rowdy in the stands. “With that hourly rate, I was worried you were going to waste all day out here and I’d have to get someone else to clean up after you.”
Would be cheaper to do it yourself, Will wanted to say. Out loud, he said, “That’s not how I work. Final price is $500.”
The man fished into his khaki pocket for his leather billfold, counting out five hundred-dollar bills. He held the money out to Will, who grabbed the ends so as to not touch the man’s hand (who seemed like the type to throw a tantrum if his skin was sullied by the lower classes). He shoved it into one of the pouches on his belt.
“I’ll definitely recommend you to my buddies,” the man boomed. “What was your name again?”
“Will.”
“Will, huh?” the man echoed. “You look familiar.”
Don’t do this right now, Will thought.
“I’ve probably got one of those faces,” he said.
The man’s face stretched into a grin, and he shook his finger in Will’s direction. “No, nonono, I’ve definitely seen you before,” he said.
Will opted to reach down for his toolbox in lieu of responding. In a way, he was reminded of his first conversation with Margot Verger, where he’d been upfront about his history and how that somehow convinced her he was a good person to have a child with. Aside from the fact that Will would not sleep with this man in a million years, he didn’t have it in him to be flippant with total strangers right now, especially where his finances were involved.
Although, who knew if this guy would still make the recommendations knowing who he was?
The moment that thought crossed Will’s mind, the man snapped his fingers. “Hannibal Lecter,” the man said, and the sound of his name made Will flinch. “You’re Will Graham, aren’t you?”
Will straightened his spine, his facial muscles tense as he tried to keep his expressions in check. “I am,” he admitted.
“Aw, man,” the client said. “That’s crazy. Figured you’d be out hunting him down, or something.”
“They’ve got other people doing that,” Will said. He started to turn away, but the man didn’t pick up on it, or just didn’t care.
“Wooow,” the man said. “Must have been rough dealing with a crazy person like that. I don’t know how someone could even consider eating people.”
“He defies understanding,” Will responded, continuing to turn away. “You have a good day.”
“Musta messed you up real good for you to be out here fixing boats.”
Will’s jaw clenched, and for a moment he considered pushing the man into the marina. Coming back at night and puncturing the fuel tank. Bludgeoning him over the head with a wrench. The thoughts simultaneously sent a thrill up his spine and made him nauseous.
Will forced a smile, but judging by the man’s arched eyebrows, it looked like more of a grimace. “Nowhere else I’d rather be,” Will said.
***
Will returned home as daylight was beginning to bleed away. Showering made him feel lighter; the steam seemed to leach the heaviness from his muscles. He thought he’d remained active enough while working full-time, but the manual labor had taken more out of him than he’d expected. His shoulders still ached even after he’d dried off and dressed. And then, of course, there was the added obstacle of his stomach. He was well out of the woods with his recovery, but that didn’t stop the intermittent pain that felt like he was being ripped open all over again. It had seized him while he was flushing out an engine at the dock, and he’d gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. Will knew scars were like this; his first shoulder injury had done the same. But at the end of the day, he hadn’t known the man that stabbed him in the shoulder. He knew the man that left him bleeding on a kitchen floor.
Once the dogs were fed, Will settled before his laptop to check his email. Work was dwindling with winter coming, but he wanted to ensure he at least had enough to support him for the next few weeks. His browser opened to MSN, and the day’s headlines populated in front of him. Much of it related to Virginia or national politics, but one outlier caught his eye. It was about the Minnesota Shrike.
He should ignore it. He logged on to complete a specific task and didn’t need to spiral thinking about Hobbs (or his daughter) right now.
Will clicked on the headline, and the article unfurled in a new tab on a different site.
One year after Shrike’s death and subsequent murders, Minnesotans still seeking healing and answers
BY AMINA CILMI
OCTOBER 14, 2014 05:00
Tuesday, October 14 marks one year to the day the FBI opened Elise Nichols’ bedroom door to find her lifeless body. It was a bleak development in the months-long investigation into the disappearances of eight young women attending Minnesota universities. For David Sorenson of Maple Grove, it was the first time he considered that his 19-year-old daughter Lorelei could be dead.
“My heart just completely dropped,” Sorenson said. “I had been holding on to hope that they would find all the girls.”
By the time Nichols, 18, disappeared, a pattern had established itself; women in their first or second year of college vanishing during long weekends or off-campus excursions. They all had pale skin and dark hair, and they were roughly the same height and weight. Nichols was the eighth to disappear.
When Lorelei Sorenson disappeared from the University of Minnesota’s flagship campus on Friday, April 5, 2013, no such pattern existed. David Sorenson, as well as school officials at UMN and local authorities, assumed Lorelei had run off. She had done it in high school. She’d always been free-spirited.
It was only after 18-year-old Pia Cohen vanished from Bemidji State University in June 2013 that people began to connect the dots between Cohen — the fourth to disappear — and the three before her: 19-year-old Scarlett Olsen, Sorenson and 18-year-old Darcy Latimer. Three more young women — 18-year-old Rachel Winn, 19-year-old Adrienne Anderson and 17-year-old Daisy Woodward — would vanish after Cohen.
“It was stressful enough not knowing where [Lorelei] was,” David Sorenson told Eyewitness News 13 last summer. “Learning someone might’ve taken her makes it worse.”
John Nichols was present when his daughter’s body was found. The sight will never leave him, he said.
“I thought she was asleep, at first,” John Nichols told The Tribune, eyes brimming with tears. “I keep thinking I’m going to walk in her room and find her there again.”
His sorrow was apparent as he showed photos of Elise and talked about her upbringing. She was shy with a big heart. But sorrow shifted to anger when he discussed the reason Elise was gone.
“That man came into our house and took our daughter,” John Nichols said. “And he had the nerve to come back while my wife and I were at home knowing he killed her.”
The man in question is believed to be 47-year-old Garret Jacob Hobbs, a Bloomington pipefitter. Authorities tracked down Hobbs from a piece of shrapnel found on Elise Nichols’ clothing and a resignation letter at his last worksite. Records showed Hobbs was registered as a visitor at each of the universities his victims attended. Hobbs died in a confrontation with the FBI at his Bloomington home just a few days after Elise Nichols’ body was found.
With no interviews completed while Hobbs was alive, there has been little insight into his motives or thought processes. Investigators believe Hobbs chose the women because of their resemblance to his own daughter, 18-year-old Abigail. Both Abigail and her mother, Louise, had their throats cut by Hobbs before he was fatally shot. Abigail spent weeks in a coma at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. Louise did not survive.
After Nichols’ body was found, authorities approached the other seven families to inform them that their daughters were likely dead as well. Sophia Winn, mother of Rachel, said she “flew into a rage” when she heard the news.
“I’m not proud of it,” Winn said. “I was spitting and screaming like a crazy person. But I felt crazy. How can you not be crazy when your child goes missing, and then you’re told they’re not looking for her anymore because she’s probably dead?”
Knowing their daughters weren’t coming home was already a nightmare scenario. The horror only grew once authorities announced they believed Hobbs was eating his victims’ remains. Human hair was later found inside pillows in the Hobbs household. From then, it became clear to John Nichols that his daughter would be the only one receiving a burial.
“I felt guilty and I wasn’t even the one that did wrong,” Nichols said. He was actively debating whether to invite the other families to Elise’s wake when the Latimers reached out first. They had been commiserating with the families of the other victims since June 2013. From there, the Nichols were brought into the fold with others who had just experienced the worst tragedy of their lives. The eight families filed a joint wrongful death lawsuit against Hobbs’ estate in January 2014. The Nichols were seeking to get back the costs of Elise’s burial and the other seven families sought punitive damages. A judge awarded their suit in full in March of this year.
Two more families would soon join the fray — the Boyles and the Schurrs. Cassandra “Cassie” Boyle, 18, was found dead in a field in Minneapolis on October 17, 2013. Early reports from the FBI suggested that Boyle was Hobbs’ ninth victim. Peter and Helen Boyle were beside themselves. Matters only became worse when 17-year-old Marissa Schurr was found dead in a cabin belonging to Hobbs nearly a month later — and the DNA of their son, Nicholas, was found on her body.
“First they were telling us our little girl was dead, and then they were telling us her own brother killed her and another girl,” Helen Boyle said. “I thought I failed as a parent.”
A manhunt began for Nicholas Boyle shortly after Schurr’s death, with the search intensifying after he reportedly broke into the Hobbs household in Bloomington and assaulted Abigail Hobbs and one of her FBI escorts. Boyle then vanished, turning up dead in January 2014.
With Nicholas out of the picture, questions swirled around who killed Cassie and Marissa. Corrinne Schurr, mother of Marissa, and many of her Bloomington neighbors point fingers at Abigail Hobbs, who frequently spent time with her father at his cabin and visited college campuses with him. Schurr told authorities that her daughter visited Abigail the day of her death. The FBI has never publicly named Abigail as a suspect in any of the deaths.
Abigail would eventually vanish herself. Hobbs flew into Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport from Baltimore, Md. with FBI special agent Will Graham the morning of Feb. 6. Staff at the psychiatric facility where Hobbs was a patient said Graham had removed her from the facility without notice. Security footage showed the two leaving the airport in a rental car and Graham returning to the airport without Hobbs later that evening. Graham was arrested the next day, Feb. 7, after he reportedly vomited Hobbs’ severed ear.
At the time, the FBI said evidence suggested Graham had killed Hobbs, Schurr and Cassie Boyle, as well as two others. It seemed like Graham would be convicted of the deaths, but in a move that would become frustratingly common, authorities changed course claiming evidence pointed to Hannibal Lecter, a Baltimore psychiatrist. Lecter, who is accused of upwards of thirty deaths, is believed to have fled the country and is now the focus of an international manhunt.
Earlier this year, Hobbs’ and Schurr’s classmates at Hennepin High School in Bloomington released balloons in their honor, just a few days before they would have graduated. At that celebration, Ashley Carter, head of the school pep squad, gave remarks.
“This year has reminded us that life is short and can be taken from us in an instant,” Carter said. “We, the Class of 2014, have a duty to make this world kinder and seek justice for those who are hurt by the people who aren’t so kind.”
As the search for Lecter continues, the families continue to lean on each other. They bring each other meals. They send emails and texts when one of their children’s birthdays passes. They’ve started a Facebook group demanding justice for their children and Lecter’s other victims.
“We want justice for Nick and Cassie,” Peter Boyle said. “And all of our children who have fallen victim to these psychopaths.”
Will began to move his cursor to close the tab when the top of the comment section caught his eye - specifically, his own name in the comments.
> October 14, 2014 15:01
God, all these comments are going on about whether Will Graham’s a psycho and whether Abigail Hobbs was secretly a killer and not focusing on THE NUMEROUS GRIEVING FAMILIES that were the focus of this article. Can you all get a grip?
The top reply to that comment was equally incensed. Considering these families are grieving because their children were murdered and there’s been no conclusive trial or explanation of what happened, I think all the discussion is relevant.
Against his better judgment, Will continued to scroll. Some of the comments were tame, wishing for authorities to bring Hannibal to justice or asking about ways to support the families. A handful talked about Abigail.
> October 14, 2014 11:43
>> I get that Abigail and Louise Hobbs aren’t really sympathetic characters around here, but I can’t help but feel sad for them. Abigail especially. She just couldn’t escape the psychos.
The further Will scrolled, though, the less charitable the commentariat became.
> October 14, 2014 10:49
>> I still think Will Graham killed Abigail Hobbs.
>>> October 14, 2014 11:01
>>>> Yeah, wasn’t he the last person to see her alive? And we’re supposed to believe Lecter killed her?
>>>>> October 14, 2014 11:06
>>>>>> If I take out my neighbor, can I blame it on Hannibal Lecter since everything’s his fault now?
>>>>> October 14, 2014 11:15
>>>>>> maybe he handed her over
>>>>> October 14, 2014 13:01
>>>>>> I’m confused as to how Graham ate her ear if he didn’t kill her?
>>>>>>> October 14, 2014 14:24
>>>>>>>> Lecter was apparently feeding his victims to people. See here: [link]. Doesn’t answer how Graham didn’t realize, though.
>>> October 14, 2014 12:19
>>>> I know we’re banned from mentioning/linking the crime blog on here, but FL has been banging the drum on Graham for a LONG time.
>>>>> October 14, 2014 12:57
>>>>>> The “crime blog” is banned on here because it’s unverified junk.
>>>>>>> October 14, 2014 13:20
>>>>>>>> More and more news outlets are citing that “unverified junk,” so.
Will let out a frustrated sigh and closed his laptop. There was nothing he could do to escape what people thought about him - that he was a killer (he was), that he was Hannibal’s accomplice (he was, in a way), that he was Abigail’s murderer. (He wasn’t. She was alive the last time he saw her.) But all he could think about was her.
Something moved in Will’s peripheral vision, and he rotated his head slowly. There, melded with the shadows near the front door, was Abigail, as he’d seen her in Hannibal’s kitchen. She stared unblinkingly, even as the blood streaking her face dripped into her eyes. Dark buds of cartilage formed on either side of her head and continued to elongate. The cartilage thickened and branched until tall antlers stood. The antlers, too, began to drip blood.
The first comment on the news article lingered in his head; she just couldn’t escape the psychos. Abigail, thrust into a life she never wanted, or so she said. Abigail, who pushed her psychiatrist out a window and gutted a young man. Abigail, who wished she’d killed her own father before Will had. Abigail, across the ocean in France or Italy, or maybe dead somewhere in Maryland. Abigail, under the thumb of Hannibal Lecter in her final moments, whether those moments were five months ago or right now.
Will had never truly known Abigail. He’d stayed away so as to protect her, and Hannibal had only gotten closer. Hannibal wanted Abigail to be what he wanted Will to be, and Will wasn’t sure either of them could be that. She cried when she did what Hannibal told her. Hannibal had nearly thrown her away so easily - thrown both of them away - what would it take for him to try again? What would she do then?
Nevermind whether Abigail was the cold-blooded killer Alana saw her as - she was not safe with Hannibal. Not now or ever. Somebody needed to help her.
But, at the same time, Will didn’t know if he was the right person for that. Of all the memories he’d pieced together in the months following his incarceration and medical treatment, what happened with Abigail was not one of them. He remembered shouting at her. He remembered her wide-eyed fear and her indignant nature in spite of it. He didn’t remember her leaving, didn’t remember if he’d tried to follow her. Had he left her with Hannibal, like the comment section said? He could see himself doing that, but he didn’t even remember whether Hannibal showed up to the cabin. Abigail had every right not to trust Will.
But Hannibal wasn’t trustworthy either; Will had learned that time and time again. The man at the docks had asked him whether Will was hunting Hannibal down; perhaps he should be. Let Hannibal answer for what he had done to Will, to Abigail, and to everyone else. (Let him grovel at Will’s feet. Let him hold Will close again, but this time kinder. Let them exist together for a moment without the hurt.)
Will reopened his laptop and began researching entry to Europe by sea.
October 17, 2014
It was still early when a knock came at the front door. Will looked up from where he was fixing a motor on the floor, eyes furrowed. The dogs swarmed to the door, and Will pushed himself off the ground, wrench still in hand. He pulled the door open, and through the screen door he was greeted by the somber countenances of Kade Prurnell and two more agents.
“Mr. Graham, a moment of your time,” Prurnell said.
“Do I have a choice?” Will asked.
“No,” Prurnell answered.
Will sighed. “Step back.” He pushed the screen door outward, and the agents filed into the foyer. The dogs weaved around their legs curiously, and the agent bringing up the rear bent to pat Winston’s head.
“I like to think I’ve given you a lot of grace, Mr. Graham,” Prurnell said, striding to the center of the room. She turned around to face Will, crossing her arms. “More than you deserve.”
Will pulled the door shut behind him, eyeing Prurnell with caution. “Why do you say that?”
“When you were at Quantico two weeks ago, I told you to speak to me, and you left,” Prurnell said sharply. “You’ve been unreachable for the entirety of my internal investigation and the Lecter investigation. You’re lucky I didn’t come down here sooner, but Agent Crawford told me he had it handled.”
“Sounds like something Crawford would say,” Will quipped. At Prurnell’s irritated look, he added, “He’s been trying to get in touch with me. I just haven’t been answering.”
“But you answered Jimmy Price?”
“Two months after he called me.”
“Why, precisely, have you been avoiding the FBI, Mr. Graham?” Prurnell asked.
You don’t want the real answer to that, he thought. I blame myself for everything. I’m about to leave the country.
Will put his hands in his back pockets, letting out an exhale. “On one hand, I’m no longer an employee. On the other, I was recovering. I’m just trying to keep myself afloat first and worry about the rest later.”
“The rest includes two investigations that you are a key witness for,” Prurnell said. Her emphatic tone needled at Will.
“You didn’t really care what I had to say earlier this year,” Will grumbled.
“Do you want an apology for your trial, Will? Because the best evidence we had for those five deaths pointed to you,” Prurnell said.
Will considered bringing up the evidence against Chilton, hell, even the evidence of Will actually killing Randall Tier that they were now trying to pin on Hannibal, but self-preservation won out. “You’re not apologetic,” he observed. Just like someone else I know.
“I’m not,” she affirmed.
Will took Prurnell in, with her black and gray pantsuit, severe haircut and impenetrable demeanor. How did she become this way? What law offices did she work her way up through to become a career bureaucrat rubber-stamped by Congress? Who else had she thrown under the bus, and what political office would she angle for when all was said and done?
“Is my interview occurring now?” Will asked.
“No,” Prurnell said. “It’ll be on neutral ground, at Quantico. Next week.”
Quantico was far from neutral ground for Will. He nodded.
November 9, 2014
The meteorologists had said they expected this winter to be the coldest on record, but it wasn’t until the first cold snap that Will believed it. The temperature dropped and a layer of snow came with it, shutting everything down for about a day and a half. No matter that it had snowed last winter and the one before that - suddenly the entirety of Fairfax County had forgotten how to function. Will returned home from a trip to the hardware store with a dinged side mirror and irritation simmering in his gut. But he’d gotten what he needed for his boat, so he couldn’t be too upset.
Another round of snowfall was blowing in as Will walked out to his shed, new purchases in tow. His dogs chased each other in the snow, their barks echoing across the yard. It was already cold out, but the dark of the shed felt even colder, seeping through the layers Will had put on. His work table was covered with engine parts; in his peripheral vision, he could see the boat he’d splurged on after graduating with his master’s. Despite the cold, the end of the year was actually the best time to sail the ocean. Hurricane chances were nil and there would be less traffic. If all went according to plan, Will could be out of Portsmouth by Thanksgiving.
At one of the boatyards where he and his father worked (for Will, the work was mostly pointing a hose at that age), the owner spoke wistfully about his cross-Atlantic escapades, how after a certain point all you could see for miles was water. Will’s father had been uninterested, grumbling about how only wealthy men had time to sail the ocean blue while poor men scraped the hulls of their boats. Will was just 13 then, and disappearing into the sea had sounded pretty damn good. But this was different. The summer after his sophom*ore year of college, he’d hopped in a boat to Nova Scotia, and he could see the shoreline the entire time. Sailing to Europe, moored only by the knowledge that Hannibal was somewhere on the other side, was different.
He wondered if Hannibal was happy. If he was enjoying all the museums and operas the same way he had in Baltimore, like he hadn’t upended hundreds of lives. If Abigail had even once captured a sliver of that happiness in the months since her disappearance.
It was easy for Will to turn his brain off as he reassembled the engine parts. Screws here; hand twist here; hose here. He remained immersed in the repetitiveness of it all, and so he didn’t recognize the sound of footsteps crunching through the snow until the person was practically on top of him. Will glanced over his shoulder, and his heart leapt at the sight of Jack standing in the doorframe.
“I had hoped you would come look for me,” Jack said.
Will turned away, busying his hands. Undeterred, Jack continued, “But I understand why you didn’t.”
“What can I do for you, Jack?” Will asked.
“I’m here to, uh, make sure that you don’t contradict the official narrative.”
“Uh huh?” Will grunted. He looked up expectantly, still fiddling with the motor. He’d already submitted to Prurnell’s ethics investigation, even though there was nothing he could say about his and Jack’s scheme that she didn’t already know. But he and Jack were among the last people scheduled to talk to investigators about Hannibal; Will had been trying not to think about it. On top of that, there was a press conference marking six months since that night, and both of them were expected to be there.
“Well, we’re officers of the FBI, wounded in the course of heroic duty,” Jack said.
Will reached for a bit on his work table. “Well, that’s not true. For either of us.”
“Well, we were supposed to go together. That’s… that’s on me,” Jack said. “My foul, my bad.”
Will shook his head slightly. “Not all our choices are consciously calculated.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “Our decisions are.”
The sound of metal against metal filled the brief silence. As Will set one of his tools aside, Jack ventured, “You remember when you decided to call Hannibal?”
Will froze. sh*t. He parted his lips, searching for the right words. There was no use lying when Jack had already figured him out.
“I wasn’t decided when I called him,” Will said finally. “I just called him. I deliberated while the phone rang. I decided when I heard his voice.”
Jack’s voice was low and cautious. “You told him we knew.”
“I told him to leave,” Will admitted. “I wanted him to run.”
“Why?”
Will was quiet. Because I couldn’t bear harming either of you. Because no one has ever made me feel the way he has.
“Because…” he fumbled. “Because he was my friend. And because I wanted to run away with him.”
The weight of Will’s words settled between them. He could hear Jack’s breathing in the quiet of the morning. It was not unlike the day they spent ice fishing, strategizing on how to lure Hannibal in. But this time, it felt like Will was on the other end of the line.
This time, Will broke the silence. “Say something, Jack.”
“I don’t know what to say.” The other man sounded almost defeated. Will rotated his body to face Jack, pressing a hand against the edge of his work table.
“Who else knows?” Will asked.
“Brian and Jimmy, for now,” Jack said.
“For now,” Will echoed.
“Will, help me understand,” Jack said. “You spent weeks telling anyone who would listen that this man was dangerous and needed to be caught. And then you tried to let him go.”
“I didn’t plan this,” Will insisted.
Jack sighed, turning his head to stare into the distance. “Did I let you get too close, again? Has he taken over your head?”
Will swallowed. You don’t even know the half of it. “It wasn’t you,” he said. “I promise you that.”
