Work Text:
After receiving the all clear from the guards, special agent Fairwood steadily approached Dr. King’s holding cell, carefully cradling his rolled-up drawings in her hands. She honestly didn’t understand the setup of this room; with the singular cage smack dab in the center of the open layout, surrounded by the red, white and blue bunting, the cannibalistic doctor looked more like an American museum exhibit more than a contained criminal. Still, it seemed leaps and bounds more comfortable than the grey brick and plate glass hell of Baltimore Hospital.
As Marianne came closer, she observed "The Goblin", faced away from her in a rolling chair, silently reading a paperback book held casually in his left hand.
“Good evenin’, Marianne,” he murmured in his deep, Scottish accent, breaking the silence.
“I thought you might like your drawings back, doctor,” she replied, leaning over the wooden traffic blockers set up around the cell as a safety line to gingerly place his bundle of art onto the raised floor, well within arm’s reach of the bars. “Just until you get your view.”
She winced at her sorry attempt at humor. That fake deal she and Griselda King had concocted had caused an absolute shit storm. Her father’s furious ranting at her over the phone several hours ago was still fresh in her mind. After her foolishness, it was a mercy that he was willing to use his political influence to accommodate King as best he could, despite the doctor’s apparently disgusting remarks at the airport about Dawn and their late mother. She just hoped that she and Griselda hadn’t sentenced her little sister to death with the gamble.
“How very thoughtful,” said the doctor in a doubting voice as Marianne began to walk around the cage, not keen on speaking to his back for the remainder of her visit. “Or did my mother send ye fer one last wheedle before yer both booted off the case?”
“No, I came because I wanted to.”
That got King to fluidly lower his book about poetry and turn in his seat to face her dead on, arresting her with those strikingly blue eyes, once again.
“People will say we're in love.”
Vaguely, Marianne wondered if that meant she would’ve been added to his…menu; King’s victims had been chosen because they reminded him of that particularly dangerous emotion. Regardless, she refused to give him the satisfaction of looking abashed in any way.
Tossing his book onto the nearby table, Bog King tsked at her and carded his long, pale fingers over his lap.
“Dark Forest lsland,” he then stated with a wry smile, “that was an especially nice touch, Marianne. Yers?"
“Yes.”
“Yeah; that was good,” King softly hissed, widening that smile and making the young agent suddenly very grateful for the barrier of steel between them.
Despite the hint of amusement in his tone, she was certain he did not appreciate being played. A fact he proved to her with his following barb: “Pity about yer poor sister, though. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…”
Quickly, Marianne threw up a mental barrier to keep out all the horrific images of what Dawn might be enduring in Buffalo Bill’s clutches. She needed to focus.
“Your anagrams are showing, Doctor,” she responded, moving around to the side of the cell closest to King; he mirrored her. “Louis Friend? Iron sulfide, also known as fool's gold.”
“Oh, Marianne, yer problem is ye need to get more fun outta life.”
The agent bit back an angry retort at how none of this was a joke and that her goddamn sister’s life was at stake. She knew she was in no position to point fingers, however. The only way to get King to cooperate was to keep it together; but she couldn’t help pacing to outlet her growing anxiety.
“You were telling me the truth back in Baltimore, sir, please continue now.”
“I've read the case-files. Have you?” King said, feigning ignorance and casually gesturing to the folder on the table. “Everythin’ ye need to find him is there in those pages.”
“Then tell me how.”
“First principles, Marianne. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius: of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man ye seek?”
Marianne paused and released a quiet breath of exasperation. She was in no mood for a philosophical lecture.
“He kills women.”
“No, that is incidental,” King argued slowly and emphatically, as if he were talking to a child. “What is the first an’ principle thing he does? What needs does he serve by killin’?"
Resuming her pacing, Marianne scrambled to throw out every textbook answer drilled into her head at the academy:
“Anger. Social acceptance. Sexual f-frustrations, or-.”
“No! He covets,” King asserted, leaning towards her, eyes as wide and trained as a hunting cat. “That is his nature. An’ how do we begin to covet, Marianne? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.”
“No. We just...” she trailed off and stopped again to meet the doctor’s steadfast gaze.
“No, we begin by covetin’ what we see every day. Dorn't ye feel eyes movin’ over yer body, Marianne?”
His brogue rumbled through her very bones like thunder, and despite the crude statement, and that no one in Marianne’s life had ever stared as hard at her as King did, his seductive eyes stayed trained only on her own as he continued:
“An’ dorn't yer eyes seek out the things ye want?”
“All right, yes,” Marianne conceded, pointedly cutting her eyes away from the doctor, “now please, tell me how.”
But King's game was nowhere near finished.
“No. It is yer turn to tell me, Marianne. Ye dorn't have any more vacations to sell. Why did ye leave that ranch?”
Dammit. She’d been hoping to bypass their quid pro quo agreement this round.
“Doctor, we don't have any more time for any of this now.” Marianne protested, resuming her pacing and casting a nervous glance at the distant table where the guards were waiting.
“But we dorn't reckon time the same way, do we, Marianne? This is all the time ye'll ever have.”
“Later! Listen to me,” she begged, “we've only got five-!”
“NO! I will listen now…” Dr. King exclaimed with all the authority of his namesake, and instantly, Marianne was trapped in his eyes again, “After yer parents were attacked, ye were separated from yer sister; she went to boardin’ school an’ ye went to live with cousins on a sheep an’ horse ranch in Montana. And…?”
“And one morning I just ran away.”
“Not ‘just’, Marianne. What set ye off? Ye started at what time?”
“Early. Still dark.”
“Then somethin’ woke ye, didn't it? Was it a dream? What was it?”
Resisting Dr. Bog King was like resisting the tide. The strong waves of his coaxing persistence rhythmically crashed against her until she was once again pulled out into the dark ocean of her most repressed memories. No longer able to move save for a tremble, her voice lapsed into a whisper.
“…I heard a strange noise.”
“What was it?”
“It was…screaming; some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.”
“What did ye do?”
Marianne could scarcely draw her eyes away from King’s. As hypnotic and unforgiving as they were, if she dared to break from their gaze, she no longer saw the wide-open room around her, but the shadowy, frigid planes of the ranch on that awful night.
“I went downstairs…outside……I crept up into the barn…I was so scared to look inside, but I had to.”
“What did ye see, Marianne? What did ye see?” King prodded, ever so softly.
“Lambs. They were screaming.”
“They were slaughterin’ the spring lambs?”
Tears rimmed Marianne’s eyes, surrounded in her mind by the horrors she’d seen and heard so many years ago.
“And they were screaming.”
“An’ ye ran away?”
“No…first I tried to free them,” Marianne said; no doubt it might just have been the first time her instinct to serve and protect had manifested, “I opened the gate to their pen, but they wouldn't run. They just stood there, confused. They wouldn't run.”
“But you could; an’ ye did, didn't ye?”
“Yes. I took one lamb and I ran away as fast as I could.”
“Where were ye goin’, Marianne?” King asked, echoing her own concerns the very moment she’d picked up that lamb.
“I don't know. I didn't have any food, any water and it was very cold, very cold,” Marianne’s face pinched, as if still feeling the biting chill, “I thought...I thought if I could save just one, but...he was so heavy…so heavy. I didn't get more than a few miles when the sheriff's car picked me up. The rancher was so angry, he sent me to live at the orphanage in Bozeman until my father was released from the hospital. I never saw the ranch again.”
“…What became o’ yer lamb, Marianne?”
“He killed him.”
“Ye still wake up sometimes, dorn't ye?” King ascertained, peering hard at the soul of the woman before him, “Wake up in the dark an’ hear the screamin’ o’ the lambs?”
“Yes.”
“An’ ye think, if ye save poor Dawn, ye could make them stop, dorn't ye? Ye think if yer sister lives, ye worn't wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screamin’ o’ the lambs.”
“I don't know…I don't know…”
“Thank ye, Marianne,” King breathed, as if she’d given him the water of eternal life in a sweltering desert, “Thank ye.”
A shiver ran through Marianne’s body, and it was just how not unpleasant it was that forced her to end this unwanted psychoanalysis.
“Tell me his name, doctor.”
King did not answer immediately. Instead, he took a slow, deep breath and craned his head back, listening, before glancing at her again with what the agent could’ve sworn were the hint of tears in his sapphire eyes.
“Dr. Plum, I presume. I think ye know each other.”
And just like that, the spell was broken. Ice raced up and down Marianne’s spine at the realization of lost time, the sound of approaching footsteps, and no new information to catch Buffalo Bill.
“Ok, let's go,” came Dr. Plum’s obnoxious order.
Marianne ignored the woman and her escort of guards.
“It's your turn, doctor.”
This time, Plum gestured with her pointer finger.
“Out!”
“Tell me his name.”
King stayed silent.
“Sorry, ma'am. I've got orders,” said one of the guards, grasping Marianne’s arm to lead her away, “I have to put you on a plane. Come on now.”
As the other guard took Marianne’s free arm to assist, King finally spoke as he rose from his seat to his impressive 6’5” height and followed the group as they neared the corner of his cell.
“Brave Marianne, ye will let me know when those lambs stop screamin’, worn't ye?”
“Tell me his name, Dr. King!” Marianne shouted over her shoulder, desperation growing as with the distance between her and King.
“Marianne!” King called, sliding a single thick folder through the cage bars, “Yer case-file.”
With a burst of strength, Marianne wrenched herself free from the protesting guards and ran straight back to King. Latching onto the folder, she expected him to release it at once, but he held on for a beat, meeting her brown eyes for the final time.
“Goodbye, tough girl.”
Electricity shot along her arm as she then felt King gently stroke the tip of her finger with one of his own.
The simple and strange connection was gone as quickly as it had come. Both agent and case-file were ripped away from King, but as she was marched from the room, Marianne looked back at the one man who affected her like no other until the last possible moment.