The corridors of the FBI building were silent after hours. Each agent tucked away in bed or working tirelessly on cases. Hannibal imagined them streaming from the sliding doors to get into simple understated sedans. He imagined them heading home through rush hour traffic before greeting a beleaguered spouse and palming tow headed children. It was idyllic and grand in a simple Rockwell way that left the blood in pictures and the careful aim in shattered paper filed away to sit quiet as forgotten notes in employee files. Even now, he stood out in the warm brown of his suit patterned with a smooth hounds tooth picked in pale shades of blue. Hannibal was not standard issue.
He walked at a curious stroll, pausing outside the double doors that led to the morgue. To the right of the door was a water fountain inset into the tile. He wet his fingers, rubbing them together with bowed head before swiping the pass he'd been issued and straightening into the rush of cold clinically stale air. Death lingered here, lost in the corridors of empty flesh wasted on cold slabs. Death was filed as neatly as the employee records and Hannibal flicked the last drops from the tips of his fingers and entered.
The steel glimmered under the blue florescent cast of light, back lit from the x-ray viewers left humming white against the walls. The first alcove was empty as a rectory of a forgotten church. The altar empty and waiting for the body to fill it with joy of function. He rubbed his lips together, pausing to let his eyes flick over the empty board riddled with tack holes. The voices would lead him to where he needed to be. He leaned back, glancing to the right and catching sight of Jack Crawford and his round puggish face. The man was sinking under the weight of his guilt and passion, bedrock inducting to melt and reform into something harder and more brittle. Hannibal nodded his hello, passing as Jack exited and paused in the open entry to the next alcove. He clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head.
Will was staring at the cloth draped corpse, the file spread out behind him. The pictures were gruesomely beautiful in their own way- the body cut into neat segments and spread at the joint of bone with bits of rebar. The woman had been tall, thin with the protrusion of spine and haunted hollows under strong cheekbones. She'd been beautiful once, now stretched and elongated into a wisping parody of herself. The life wicked from her eyes and the gloss gone dull in her hair.
"What do you see?" he asked, words low and atonal as prayer, not wanting to disturb. Will at work was a violence of rage and loss that simmered to bubble into his eyes and the way he held his shoulders. He looked so calm under the mask he'd placed on his own psyche, at rest in someone else and uncaring of the turbulence of losing his own haunting worries. It was the question Jack always asked, and Hannibal could not contain the need to know.
His shoes broke the silence, clicking in his long stride as he circled to stand at the foot of the body, eyes glittering dark in the moody shadows as he watched. "How do you see?"
