Work Text:
Freddie always follows her stories, wherever they take her. This time they’re taking her somewhere much more desirable than most of her previous trips, and as she looks at photographs of the mangled remains of Rinaldo Pazzi, she feels thankful.
Not just for the location, either. It’s not every day a famous mass-murderer takes up his game again, after being quiet for so long. It makes one hell of a read.
There’s also the speculation that Il Mostro has become I Mostri, in the long absence, and there’s just enough evidence of this fact that Freddie has taken and run miles with it. She’s starting an entire series, cataloging her findings, and she’s positively raking it in.
Everyone is enamored by a romantically titled killer, in some far off romantically inclined country. What’s better, what’s even more attractive, is that there seems to be two of them now, working in tandem.
They may or may not be personally tied together, with some red string or whatever, but the truth in that doesn’t really matter. Freddie writes it that way, because it sells.
The only thing that would sell more is if these two Italian killers are actually two American killers, that ran away with each other almost a year ago, leaving Baltimore in shambles. Freddie, having looked at an extremely large amount of evidence through a very wide angle lens, doesn’t see this as being out of the realm of possibility. In fact, it’s traversed into likelihood, the longer the Florence murders have gone on. Not to mention, one of the victims was Jack Crawford.
Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter have to be somewhere, and wherever that is,it’s not a far stretch to think they’re slaughtering people together in the sunset, having a grand old time. Freddie had never trusted Will, and it turns out she was completely right. She usually is.
The least she can do is take advantage of it, and write a lot of articles saying so in very roundabout ways. Currently, she’s trying to put two and two together in the vaguest way possible, because while the speculation says that Il Mostro and his companion are cannibalistic murder husbands from the states, it’s still purely speculation. Freddie may stretch the truth, but she can’t stretch what she doesn’t actually have. Connecting dots will have to be her game plan until she has something hard, and hopefully this city will give that to her.
Freddie glances at the large man next to her on the plane. He’s trying to sleep, but her computer is keeping him up. She continues to type furiously, anyway. This article won’t write itself, and she’s never been able to sleep on planes.
The minute the plane lands, she starts making calls. She shoves jetlag off of her and schedules interviews, schedules quick pop-ins, plans to corner key witnesses that don’t really want to talk to her, but, for the good of all that is journalism, and her career, absolutely need to.
A story has to get written, and she’s never shy when it comes to sources. Her sources need to learn to stop being shy, too.
____________
Freddie flounces down the steps of the Widow Pazzi’s home, extremely proud of herself. It’s been a productive day.
The widow is a bit worse for wear than when Freddie found her, but that’s journalism. Or at least, that’s Freddie’s journalism. Sometimes, most times, she needs to be tough as nails to get what she wants.
This interview hadn’t been easy. Rinaldo’s wife was extremely tight-lipped, the poor thing, like she was terrified of saying too much. But Freddie had managed to pry one vital piece of information out of her: the Fells.
No one had been sure who the last people to see Rinaldo Pazzi alive were. There was some vague speculation on who it might be. His neighbors had mentioned that they might have seen someone over for dinner, but they knew nothing more, because Pazzi didn’t speak to them about it. Pazzi had told no one. No one except his wife.
It was certainly a breakthrough: Pazzi has dinner with the Fells, and then he turns up dead. Whether that is the Fells’ fault remains to be seen, but Freddie intends to find out.
Freddie doesn’t know much about the Fells, only vague notions she’s gathered in her search here in Florence. Their name crops up from time to time, with Dr. Fell a prominent figure at the University. Most are completely enamored by them, and Freddie has noticed how any suspicion slides around them like they are encased in a bubble. The only person who doesn’t seem as in love with them as the rest of this city is Pazzi’s widow, which Freddie thinks is much more telling.
She posts an update to her page with a phone number at the bottom, saying she’s looking to speak with the family, and anyone else who has information on them. And she waits.
She only gets a few calls. Most are vaguely polite insistences that the Fells were Pazzi’s friends, that there’s nothing about them to tell. One man chews her out for prying into everyone’s lives in a heavy Italian accent, and Freddie rolls her eyes, holds the phone away from her ear for a few seconds before hanging up.
Finally, finally, a few days after posting her request, she actually gets somewhere.
The Fells’ daughter herself calls, and Freddie is practically giddy when she hears the message. The girl’s voice sounds vaguely familiar, though it’s probably just the phone. She seems sweet, and worried, but Freddie will be the judge of that.
There’s a slightly raised red flag in the back of her mind at the invitation to dinner the girl offers, for whatever reason, and Freddie ignores it. If she listened to every half-mast alarm in her head she would never get anywhere.
Whatever this is that she’s getting into, she’ll find a way out. She always does.
___________
Their apartment building is opulent, carved from stone and accented with warm golds in its interior. It’s a bit overdone, in Freddie’s opinion.
The doorman is old and speaks no english, but he smiles all the same. Freddie shows him a slip of paper with the apartment number on it, and the Fells’ name, and he calls them, speaking slow and fond to what sounds like a young girl. The daughter, probably.
“Sì, tutto bene, cara mia! Buonasera!” He hangs up the phone and ambles around the front desk, leading Freddie towards the elevator with a nod and an extended hand.
“Signora.”
Freddie smiles at the man, and expresses her thanks, anticipation crawling up her spine and words flying around her head - headlines, passages, anything she could possibly get out of this dinner slams the walls of her skull, itching to be written. She practically bounces on the balls of her feet.
The elevator is tiny, and door closes slowly. The building, however rich, is old.
The doorman’s “Prego, signora,” is shut out by the rumbling of the metal cage.
____________
Freddie knocks on the Fells’ door and reaches into her bag to get a pen. She’s not sure when she might need it. It might be immediately, it might be an hour into the meal, but she’s going into this somewhat blind, so she might was well be prepared to capture whatever they might throw at her.
A dog barks once in the background, and Freddie frowns. She’s not the biggest fan of dogs, especially large ones. They tend to jump.
The door opens before she’s found her pen, and she shoves her hand deeper into her bag, brushing the cool plastic with the tips of her fingers. She raises her head with her arm, pen in hand, and almost drops it when she sees her host.
Abigail Hobbs smiles at her, completely and utterly alive, and Freddie’s brain becomes a pile-up, the command to run not quite reaching her legs.
Abigail calls for Will, drags her into the apartment, and Freddie’s stomach fills with a kind of fear she’s not used to, the “there’s no way out” kind of fear. Will does not smile, just stands there in an apron and a dress shirt, and none of it is pretend anymore.
There’s a click of a lock behind her, and all at once the highways in her mind clear and Freddie breaks into a sprint down the front hall. She reaches the kitchen, collides with the counter, and her eyes land on the open balcony. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when she reaches it - it’s a 3 story drop - but it’s better than being here.
Anything is better than what’s waiting for her here.
There’s a sharp, painful tug on her hair and she’s falling backwards, her shoes slip and her hands shoot out in front of her, grasping, hoping, looking for something to keep her upright.
Her hands find a large vase, the only thing within reach, but it’s useless, and comes crashing down with her.
Will forces a rag over her mouth and nose and the world starts to run, starts to blur, and suddenly everything is black and she’s falling.
Her mind retreats into itself, the last thing it yells is a useless order to fight.