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The water was too still. Men worked along the edges, but the ripples of their motion were strangled by lilies just yards from the shore. The gaps between the thick leaves were ink-dark and barely reflective on a cold winter morning. It might only be two feet deep at the center, but from Will’s perspective it dropped off into infinity.
Will’s experience with freshwater didn’t extend to golf course water traps. You couldn’t fish in these, and he’d never really been one to snag that country club invitation. Bitterness? Not for him, but it could be a motivation for the killer. Despoiling the promised land of polo shirts and golf shoes… It had a certain attraction to it.
He left the body and walked along the shore, if it could be called that. The manicured grass ended in an unnaturally even circle. The sand was white, imported, probably, from somewhere expensive. It would have been cheaper to line the banks with aquarium gravel, and would have achieved the same effect.
Will had to evaluate the crime scene. He had to find the design. And he would, but not yet. Some things were not staying quiet… He had to start getting better sleep. As a vow, it was useless. It wasn’t as though he chose to wake up, or worse, not wake up, and stay for hours in dreams of stags and blood and Garret Jacob--No. Not here.
He looked out at the water instead. He saw, just a little ways out, a parting of the thick lilies. He saw something there, where no ripple from the examiners sampling the cloudy water or searching for dropped rings or car keys reached. Will didn’t take his eyes off it as he stepped into the pond.
The water was a shock to the system. It soaked his socks in seconds. The bottom of the pond sucked at his steps. His feet came loose in his shoes. It turned his strides to the slow motion walk of a nightmare, and instead of waking up Will felt less sure than ever that he was really here, on a golf course thirty minutes outside Quantico, where a bound and drowned woman had been pulled up by the landscaper thinning the lilies this morning.
Water to his ankles. His calves. His knees. Water high enough that a body laying at the bottom would be submerged. He was almost there, but the thing he’d been following was gone.
Will rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and looked again. That wasn’t right. He hadn’t taken his eyes off it, he was certain he hadn’t taken his eyes off--for an instant, he saw it. Just a foot in front of him, arching up.
A hand, fish belly white, holding aloft--
The cut was so fine, so quick, that for an instant he didn’t feel it. Blood in the water, a muddy brown against the pond’s filth, and Will didn’t understand. He straightened up. He was holding a scalpel, dripping with pond muck, and the inch long slice between his first and second fingers was bleeding with the alacrity of all hand wounds. There was no hand sticking out of the water. He understood now that there never was. He was just a man knee deep in a pond, chasing phantoms.
“Will? What the hell are you doing?”
Will turned around and made his way back to shore, already concocting a lie for Jack Crawford.
***
“You had quite an adventure today.”
“If being a little wet for two minutes can be termed an adventure.” Will set his wine glass down on the table. Therapy with a glass in hand didn’t strike him as odd anymore, just sensible. In vino veritas, and all that.
“I was referring to your bandage?” Hannibal nodded to Will’s clumsily bound hand.
“Oh. This. No, I just cut my hand.”
“Ah.”
“On a scalpel someone had thrown in a pond. Not a real pond, a fake, uh, golf course pond? Like an English garden in the middle of a very manicured prairie.”
“At a crime scene, I presume. It must be deep for a medic to use so much gauze.”
“I did this.”
Hannibal raised an eyebrow and set his wine glass aside. Then he stood, and headed wordlessly out of the room.
“No, Hannibal, I--” Will raised his voice, calling after him. “I rinsed it out! I’m not stupid!”
Several minutes later they’d moved to the desk. Hannibal sat at his usual place and Will had drawn a chair up to the corner. His arm lay between them on the desk, bent at the elbow so Hannibal could unwrap his wound. The doctor had already unfastened his cufflinks and rolled the sleeves of his shirt halfway up his forearms so he could work cleanly.
Will knew Hannibal was a doctor, had been a surgeon. It should come as no surprise that he could pull away bandages effortlessly. When they reached the final few layers, soaked with blood and dried to a crusty brown, Hannibal didn’t flinch or hesitate. He pulled them off with smooth, controlled pressure that was both professional and… distant. Will’s hand was an object, to be turned as Hannibal wanted it, to be assessed with clinical professionalism that was completely appropriate and yet…
“It did bleed a lot,” Will said into the silence. Hannibal’s skin was warm and dry against his. He could feel the exact imprint of his fingers everywhere he was touched, no matter how light the contact.
“Mmm.”
“For a few minutes. I used all the napkins from the team’s coffees and then the bandages to stop it. It was really going.”
“I can see that.” Hannibal spread Will’s fingers and turned the wound towards the light. It was puffy around the edges, the skin soft and wrinkled from the moisture of the bandage. There was some redness around the puckered wound. The scab cracked a little, fresh red against the brown, but it only hurt a little.
“Probably I was being stupid actually,” Will said. “I should have seen the medic. Maybe gotten stitches.”
Hannibal finally looked up at Will. He didn’t say anything, but he tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. There was a tightness to his mouth that spoke of suppressed amusement, and Will felt his cheeks heat up. Oh, now Hannibal paid attention.
“Probably not... stitches. I guess that may be a little overboard.”
“A little,” Hannibal agreed. He reached instead for the rubbing alcohol and a fine cloth. “This will hurt,” he said. “But it will be worth it.”
The pressure on the wound was uncomfortable, and when he’d rubbed away the scab and the alcohol dripped into the actual cut it stung like the first shot of whiskey Will’d ever drank. It was a good pain, though, a high, clean note that cut through the distractions and feedback loops in his head. It left him at peace when it retreated.
“You are up to date on your tetanus booster, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then more than likely you have nothing to fear. I assume the weapon is being tested for any blood or contaminants you may have been exposed to?” Hannibal began to bandage Will’s hand much more efficiently than he’d done it himself.
“That’s right. But it’s not a weapon. Not “the” weapon, anyway.” Will looked from his hand to Hannibal’s still downturned face. The doctor’s brisk efficiency was faltering. There was only enough gauze for another few wraps, but his pace was slower. His off hand was still holding Will’s wrist steady.
“What makes you say that?”
“No incisions on the body. She was bound and drowned in water shallow enough that she would have been able to see light from the surface. Maybe even gotten her head above water a few times, before she got too tired to keep fighting. Preliminary reports didn’t show any signs of cutting at all. A couple bruises and abrasions, but nothing you’d use a scalpel for.”
“Coincidence makes a mockery of God and man.”
“Alright,” Will said.
“What I mean is--”
“I know what you mean,” Will cut him off. “It’s a farce. We’re going to spend a lot of time inspecting this scalpel, testing it, running down the make and model and manufacturer even though there’s no sign it was used on the victim. This coincidence could let other facts get ruined, missed, or go cold. This guy might get away because I found something suspicious but unrelated in this pond. I get it.”
Hannibal tucked the end of the bandage in and finally let Will’s hand go. Will turned his hand this way and that on his own, looking at the bandage from all angles. His hand was his again, dismissed as the object of Hannibal’s study. Just like that, the scrutiny was over. He should be relieved. He was relieved.
He was.
“Why do you think the scalpel was there?”
“I don’t know. We looked it up. It’s a mid-range model, costs about $150. A lot of money to some, nothing to others. I’m guessing most people who use Pine Ridge Golf Course and Clubhouse lean towards the “nothing” side of things. Nothing distinctive about it on preliminary analysis.”
“If you give me the specifics, I’m happy to render any insight I can.”
“Thanks. The only thing that springs to mind is… throwing it away. If not after a murder then… retirement? Quitting?”
“Like a divorcee throwing a wedding ring into the sea?” Hannibal smiled.
“Is that what you did with your scalpels? When you left surgery?” Will reached for his wine glass again at last. He could see Hannibal’s reflection in the polished surface, and he watched him there as he pretended to know how to swirl and smell his wine. It smelled like wine.
Hannibal leaned back from the desk. It was a comfortable gesture, but Will felt the space between them expand. They’d been sitting with their heads almost together for almost twenty minutes. Being two feet apart felt huge now.
“My scalpels belonged to the hospital where I worked, Will, I didn’t buy them. When I left, I left them for whomever would come after me. For the most part.”
Will swallowed his sip and arched his eyebrows. “And the lesser part?”
“There were two or three that I took with me. Solid stainless steel, capable of being sharpened thousands of times in their lifespan and each time, cutting like new. Beautiful pieces, difficult to come by. Their theft is a sin I refuse to atone for. I still do my best work with those scalpels.”
Hannibal rolled down his sleeve, smoothing the wrinkles from his shirt as he went. He looked up halfway down, as though aware of the silence and Will’s gaze for the first time. “I use them to sharpen my pencils. Nothing else provides the taper I prefer when drawing.”
“Of course.” Will drained his glass and stood. “I should be heading out. The dogs are already waiting for dinner.”
Hannibal rose to accompany Will to the door, as he usually did. As Will shrugged on his coat, he said, “Tell me, Will: how did you come to find a scalpel in a pond at all? It brings to mind a certain needle in a haystack.”
“Oh. I must’ve seen it glinting in the light.” Will started on his buttons to avoid meeting Hannibal’s gaze, but that didn’t throw off the doctor.
“Must have? Must have seen the reflection of a scalpel through two feet of dirty water?”
Will nodded slowly, but he couldn’t avoid it. “I know what happened. It was just a glint off the water, but for a second… at a crime scene, it looked white and the right size…”
Hannibal waited for him to continue in that quiet therapist way he had. He didn’t step in to help Will finish their conversations. Will hated that sometimes, the way Hannibal would let him find his own way through sentences gone awry, gone too truthful for Will’s liking.
“I thought I saw a hand. Rising up from the water, like the mushroom farm. A white hand. The scalpel was just a coincidence.” Will finished buttoning his coat, still avoiding Hannibal’s eyes. He wasn’t crazy.
“A hand and a scalpel… rather reminds me of The Lady of the Lake. She bequeathed on Arthur Excalibur, and when he wielded it none could stand against him. He united Britain, they say, under one banner for the first time. I wonder what you could do with what you have been bequeathed.”
Will looked up. Hannibal’s face was impossible to read, half-amused, half… something that defied categorization. Perhaps it simply pinged too close to an echo in Will, and he couldn’t tell what he was seeing in Hannibal and what he just wanted to see in Hannibal.
“Take up drawing, clearly.” Will’s voice was quiet.
“You’d be a wonderful artist, Will. You have an eye for detail.”
Hannibal leaned through Will’s space to open the door. Was it conditioner or cologne that smelled that way? The blast of cold night air drove the traces of thoughts from Will’s mind before he could gather them together into a coherent whole.
“Goodnight, Will. Let me know if your hand bothers you.”
“Goodnight, Hannibal.”
He turned and walked down the steps with his hand cradled close to his chest. On the drive home his hand ached a little, but every pulse lit up the phantom pressure of fingers on his wrist, and Will didn’t think of the case all night.