An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
After a blissful summer in Florence, Will and Hannibal get a call they have been dreading: Jack wants them back in the field. To their surprise, the case they’re meant to be investigating is impossible. They believe The Angler is back. How can that be, considering The Angler has been on a romantic vacation in Italy for the past six months?
A season 2 continuation of Expand Your Palate, this time interspersed with flashbacks to Hannibal’s childhood.
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Hannibal sat this one out, referencing the fact that the smell of stables made him nauseous. Will did not know a single person who enjoyed the humid smell of ammonia-soaked hay and horse manure, but when Hannibal declined the offer to tag along citing this reason, Will chose not to push. He was already in hot enough water with Hannibal anyway; he wanted to curry as much favor as he could get.
The sight that greeted them was bizarre, if he had to choose one word. ‘Emotional’ could also work. 'Shakespearean’ would be another; the bloody drama of it all, reminiscent of Titus Andronicus and the gory discovery of Lavinia. It was an image none of them would soon forget: a woman's body, covered in horse uterus, laying in the middle of the stable beside the horse she had been removed from via postmortem cesarean section.
Later, another word would come to mind: turducken.
“Is it ritualistic?” posited Jack, standing in the corner with his hands in his pockets. Usually a man willing to get down and dirty for the sake of a case, this was just a bridge too far. He left it to Will and the forensics team to take a closer look. “Sacrificial?”
Will shook his head and knelt down next to the poor animal. “No, typically the point of an animal sacrifice is to gain some aspect of the sacrifice by ending its life. This horse was sick. Not much use in offering it up. Whoever did this was using the horse like a coffin, or a kind of chrysalis. Like they were hoping she could be born again from it.” He refrained from touching the horse out of necessity to the investigation, instead ghosting his hand over its deflated abdomen, recently distended by a foal born still. After all the death he had both witnessed and inflicted on others, he was not yet disillusioned by the suffering of animals. “This is grief, Jack. I don’t think the same person who killed her put her in the horse. This was done with care. Respect. This is a murder, yes, but this—” he gestured to the horse’s ruptured belly, “—this is a funeral.”
“Some funeral,” chimed Katz.
“Some murder,” added Zeller, shining a penlight into the woman’s cloudy eye. Burst veins sent branching deltas of red across the milky sclera. “She was scrappy. She fought back.” The beam of his light traveled to her neck and the purple bruises striping it. “Victim was deceased before she was enwombed. Ecchymosis of the subcutaneous tissue is consistent—”
“She was strangled,” Price interjected before shrugging to an offended Zeller. “A bit wordy. The womb isn’t always such a safe and nurturing space. Shark fetuses cannibalize each other in utero. Chances are everyone in this room has absorbed a twin.” He peered into her stiff jaw, just open enough where one could slip a finger into her mouth, but nothing more. “Mine survived.”
“Well, Will? Thoughts? Any idea who could have done this?”
Will had some thoughts, though he was reluctant to share them with Jack. He was so close to actually getting somewhere with Hannibal before Jack interrupted them, and both his curiosity about the nature of the case and Hannibal's insistence that he go and help out put a stop to it real quick. The moment passed, ruined by the sudden knell of his phone. Doing favors for the man who ruined that moment wasn't high on his list of priorities. “This woman isn’t the only victim here, Jack. There’s a third party involved that we're not seeing. You’ll need someone who can get in the mind of that third party if you want to find your killer.”
It was apparent how hard Jack had to resist sighing once he realized who Will was talking about.
Price shone his own light inside the woman’s mouth. “There’s something blocking her airway. If I can just—” He had braced himself over her, but jumped back just as quickly, like something bit him. “She has a heartbeat!”
They all looked between one another, more bewildered and disbelieving with each glance. “She’s in rigor mortis,” Katz argued.
“She has a heartbeat,” insisted Price.
“What? Let me see—” Zeller planted a hand over the woman's sternum, feeling for barely a second before snapping back again. “She has a heartbeat.”
Jack grimaced in equal parts confusion and horror. “Bring her back to the morgue. We’ll open her up there.”
Afterwards, at the lab, they would pry open her ribs like church doors until her lifeless heart was visible. Something would shift within, and a live starling would fly out, landing on a beam overhead and shaking the blood off its feathers, spraying a soft red mist onto the white walls.
