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Lumen Obscura	By : PinkSiamese Category: -Misc TV Shows > Crossovers Views: 1077 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannibal or Dexter in any of their incarnations (TV shows, movies, books). I am making no money off this story.

Chapter List
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Lumen,
I squeezed some OJ for you this morning and left it in the fridge. Text me if you want to grab some lunch, today should be a good day for it.
I’ll see you later. Any supper thoughts?
Dex.
She yawns, scratches the back of her head. She pulls the note off the refrigerator. She reaches up into the cabinet for a glass. Blinding white light pours in through the slatted windows, weakens the shadows. It spreads its load of heat across the tops of her feet. She opens the refrigerator and takes out the carafe, a carton of eggs, a package of bacon.
Your man Graham? He’s in a hotel fifteen miles from here.
Lumen takes a deep breath, lets it out. She fills her glass with juice. She takes down a skillet, centers it on the burner. She turns it on. The windows muffle the traffic sounds but they sneak in, burrow beneath the soft hum of the air conditioner, break the silence apart.
All the Florida coastal jurisdictions got an email.
She butters the pan, cracks three eggs into it. She listens to the eggs sizzle as she pads around the corner on bare feet and enters the bedroom. She digs her laptop out of the bottom of her bag. She carries it back to the kitchen, pulls up the stool. She sits. She turns it on, flips up the screen.
“Okay, Freddie,” she murmurs, starting to type. She hooks her messy hair behind her ears. “Tell me what’s really going on.”
The web page pulls up, blinks to life. She strokes the touchpad, takes a sip of her juice.
The front-page exclusive shows an old exhausted man in front of a fancy front door. He looks startled, the skin loose around his mouth, his eyes flat: ALABAMA SENATOR FEATURED PROMINENTLY IN MANUFACTURE AND DISTRIBUTION OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.
Lumen scrolls, scans the sidebar. Filed under the Yesterday tab she sees 2 DEAD GIRLS FOUND IN CORAL GABLES: IS THERE A NEW SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE? She clicks on the link.
She gets up, grabs a spatula. She flips the eggs one at a time, eases them facedown. She pulls two slices of bread from a half-finished loaf and drops them into the toaster. She reaches over the sink, turns the laptop around so she can read. She takes down a plate. She wrestles open the package of bacon.
CORAL GABLES, FL.
Early this morning, a young couple looking forward to a leisurely day at the beach met up with a grisly surprise: two young women, their lower bodies cut off and replaced with shark tails, lay sprawled at the tide line. The bodies of the young women turned toward each other, arms reaching, as though seeking solace even in death.
“God, what shitty writing.” Lumen shakes her head. She slides the eggs onto the plate, places it inside the microwave. She peels strips of bacon out of the package. She lays them side by side in the pan. “Pay better or something, Freddie, because your roster of correspondents really needs help.”
A source confirms that the presentation of the bodies matches that of another victim, this one found in Rockport, Texas, three months ago.
The toast pops up. Lumen tears off a paper towel. She plucks the slices out of the toaster, tosses them onto the towel. She grabs a clean butter knife out of the dish rack.
This same source also confirms FBI involvement.
“Yeah,” she says, flipping the bacon strips, “that’s what I heard, too.”
A team dispatched from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI arrived in Coral Cables this morning and set up camp at the crime scene. For three long hot hours, they bagged and tagged while the local cops wrangled the rubberneckers and kept the beach closed for business. The bodies, once photographed, were moved to Coral Gables Hospital.
Three photos show a broad swath of beach blocked off with sawhorses. Inside, the white sand is churned up by footprints. Yellow crime scene tape bows in the wind.
Lumen turns the heat down on the bacon, covers it. She grabs a towel off the oven handle, wipes the grease off her fingers. She leans in, squints. She clicks on one of the photos.
Two men in FBI vests stand in one corner of the crime scene, turned toward each other. A woman, also in a vest, squats inside the tape and examines what looks like a broken piece of shell. Her dark hair is pulled back into a high ponytail. It blows along one side of her face, strands fluttering across her chin. A big black man dressed in a twilight-purple shirt, a dark blue tie, and gray trousers positions himself between a pair of local police officers and the crime scene. His feet are planted far apart, his hands held out in front of him. Black sunglasses shield his eyes. His fingers are spread. His mouth is half-open.
Lumen clicks on the second photo. In this one, the bodies are in bags, lifted by police and FBI alike off the sand.
In the third, all three FBI agents are inside the tape. They crouch close to the perimeter. Two of them, the woman and one of the men, are facing each other. The man points at something on the ground. Both hold bags marked EVIDENCE.
Beyond the borders of the crime scene, down where the water fades into the sand, stands a man in cream khakis and a short-sleeved blue plaid button-up. The cuffs of his pants are rolled up past his ankles. His hands are in his pockets. His toes are buried in water. The vicious sun scatters light across the bay behind him. It passes through his ruffled hair, burns it red at the edges. It glints off his glasses. His brow is furrowed, his skin washed pale by the morning light. His mouth is a raw line.
“And there you are,” she whispers.
She picks up the computer, brings the screen closer to her face. Despite the quality of the photo, all that wavering distance tricked into soft-focus detail by a telephoto lens, in his eyes she can still see the drop-off, the darkness, a thousand-yard stare dredged up from some deep current and turned loose on the world.
The bacon starts to burn.
“Shit!” Lumen puts the computer down and yanks the lid off the skillet, uses it to fan the smoke. She turns off the burner. “Goddammit,” she says, hauling the pan off the stove and dumping the meat into the garbage. “Fuck fucking fuckballs. I really wanted to eat that, too.”
She closes the computer. She grabs a paper towel and takes her plate out of the microwave. She transfers the toast to the plate and picks up her juice and carries them into the living room. She sits, sets the food on the coffee table.
Fifteen miles. It’s not far. The beach is open. You could go to it.
“And that,” she says, chuckling as she waves her fork around, “is a monumentally bad idea.”
Why? Look out the windows. Look at the bay. That sun. It’s a beautiful day.
“There are better ways to spend it.” She takes a big bite of toast. “Like, I don’t know, looking for a job.”
She chews, swallows. She picks up her glass of juice, looks out the window. On the other side of the glass the sun is wild, harsh, it fills the grass and the palms and the leaves of the tropical plants with an aggressive shade of green, it sharpens the soft blue of the bay into the keen edge of a blade. It fills them to the brim with color, the way it fills an emerald or a sapphire with color.
“It is beautiful,” she murmurs. “All the days are like this, too. One after the other.” She sips. “It’s amazing.”
* * *
“How lovely to hear from you, Will. Good morning.”
Will sighs. He closes his eyes. “Hello, Dr. Lecter.”
“Are you well?”
He goes to the window of his hotel room, leans his forearm into the wall. He looks at the parking lot below. “Uh,” he swallows. “No. Not exactly.”
“What’s happened?”
“I…last night I was sleepwalking.” He straightens up, wipes his face. “Well, sleep-driving, to be precise. I ended up at this beach, I looked it up.” He turns his back on the window. “It was Miami Beach. I have no idea how I got there. I’ve never been there before.”
“Have you told Jack about this?”
“No, no. Of course not.” Will watches Stella walk out of the white-tiled bathroom, tail lifted. She looks around. The other kitten streaks out from beneath the bed and jumps on her, sends her rolling onto her back with a full-body tackle. “I ended up at the far end of Miami Beach, Doctor. I fell asleep in the car and drove myself there. How? Why?”
“Did you have an intended destination when you got in the car?”
Will shrugs. “No, not really. Sort of. I thought about taking a ride by the crime scene, maybe getting out and pacing the perimeter.”
“Perhaps your subconscious lifted the route of a map you were looking at earlier. You have spent some time in Florida, yes?”
“Yeah.” Will sits on the edge of the bed. “Mostly south of here, though.”
“So your mind intimately knows the lie of the land. It was able to plot a course for you, even though in waking life you had never been to that particular beach.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I guess.” He leans forward, props his forearms on his knees. He rubs his forehead. His eyes are closed. “It’s as good an explanation as any.”
“How is your sleep otherwise?”
“Oh, you mean when I’m not driving around south Florida in a somnambulant state? It’s just peachy.”
“It was a serious question, Will, and I am seeking a serious answer.”
“It’s…okay. Most nights, I wake up a couple of times. I have a lot of dreams.”
“Nightmares?”
“Some.” Will opens his eyes. Stella is climbing onto his right foot. She wraps her paws around his toes, bites them. “Mostly, though, just…dreams. Weird ones.” He reaches down, picks her up. “They have a kind of hallucinatory quality to them, at times.”
“I imagine so. Your mind is a unique and unusual territory, Will. It would surprise me greatly to hear of it being occupied by the average man’s dreams.”
“Do you think this is something I should worry about?” He puts the kitten on his thigh. He strokes her. “Is there some kind of pill you want me to take?”
“Hypnotic sleep sedatives increase incidences of sleepwalking rather than decreasing them. In one already prone to sleepwalking, it would be an inappropriate choice of treatment.”
“I…I think I should have a brain scan. When I get home.” Stella bites at his fingers. He moves her onto the bed. “Just to rule out an organic cause.”
“I don’t believe a brain scan is necessary at this time. It is normal, even natural, to feel unsettled by an abrupt change in surroundings. Add to that the disruption of returning to the field and the distressing nature of this case and you have the perfect recipe for this sort of thing to occur. I would be very surprised if it happened again.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. If it happens again, we will discuss it further.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say, Will.”
“But I…I don’t know, I guess I thought it was a bigger deal than this.” He stands. “It would be a bigger deal than this.”
“It can be. I don’t think it is.”
“All right. Thank you, Dr. Lecter, for your time.” He scratches the back of his head. “As always.”
“Indeed, Will.”
He glances at the bedside alarm clock. “Speaking of your time, I don’t want to take up any more of it.”
“I would like to fly down there, for the duration of the case. It’s not that I want to hold your hand, metaphorically speaking; in fact, I have no interest in monitoring you unless you desire it of me. The nature of this case fascinates me. I’d like to lend my perspective.”
Will drifts back to the window. “I don’t see any reason why you would need to do such a thing, Dr. Lecter.”
“It’s not a need. I want to. But, if it will make you uncomfortable, if it will make you feel as though I am encroaching upon your territory…I won’t.”
“No. No. It’s fine.” He puts his hand on the glass, feels the heat of the day pressing against it. “I’m sure Jack would appreciate the help.”
“Very well. Perhaps I will see you before the end of the day?”
“Perhaps.” He nods. “Okay. Good bye, Dr. Lecter.”
“Good bye, Will. Do enjoy the rest of your day.”
Will hangs up. He looks at this phone, holds it, takes a deep breath. He lets it out in a slow whistle. The kitten with no name toddles out from beneath the bed and latches onto his pant leg. He bends over, loosens her claws from the fabric. He picks her up. He looks out the window. He cradles her against his chest. She starts to purr. He tosses the phone onto the bed, rubs between her ears and stares past the palms, the parking lot, and into the street, where cars flash by.
“An attempt will be made,” he mutters.
* * *
Lumen sits in her car in a run-down neighborhood beneath the shade of a Poinciana tree. Its flaming red petals scatter across her windshield, tumble with the wind, fall to the pavement. They linger on her windshield wipers like bits of burning blood.
She sits in the shade, stares across a vacant lot. The ground is torn up, dusty white, lumber stacked in squares in one corner, earth-moving machinery parked and abandoned in another. Beyond that the street, and on the other side a big white building lies surrounded by palms and tall spindly trees, concrete pots filled with lantana, a parking lot with freshly sealed asphalt stinking of tar in the shimmering heat. Her eyes move over it, trace the angles, memorize the curve of the corners, the unbroken spaces. The windows are dark slots of glass and the door is pushed back, enfolded by the shape of the building. It’s difficult to see between the stretch of parking lot and the trunks of trees, palm fronds, the dappled shadows of branches. Three flagpoles stand in front of it.
She has a book. It’s a big leather-bound thing she snatched off Dexter’s shelf, The Complete Works of Ernest Hemingway, open across the steering wheel. Big mirrored sunglasses cover her eyes; she rests them on an excerpt of The Old Man and the Sea for seconds at a time, uses it to break up her long lingering looks at the parking lot, the sidewalk, the long concrete path leading up to the door.
The windows are rolled down. A breeze slides from one side of the car to the other, humid, languid, it’s like a cat passing by, like hot velvet on her skin holding her body’s moisture close. Sweat glitters on her forehead, her collarbones. It slides down her chin. A big jug of sun-heated water leans against the backrest of the passenger seat.
She is afraid.
She clamps her teeth around it, bites down. She rides her fear like a current of electricity. Her fingers tremble. Each breath shakes its way out of her throat.
I just want to know where he is. So I can stay away from him.
She picks up the jug of water, takes a drink. The big black man from the Tattlecrime article steps out onto the concrete path, his eyes covered by sunglasses. He’s talking. He takes big steps, his shoulders broad beneath his tropic-weight suit jacket. His arms swing into their maximum allotment of space. He turns his head. The sun gleams on the Bluetooth in his ear.
Lumen glances down at the stack of pictures in her lap. She lifts some of them up, peers at the photo beneath. “You’re Jack Crawford,” she murmurs.
He crosses the parking lot, strides toward a black SUV parked close to the building. He climbs in. The windows are heavily tinted, obliterating his silhouette from her view. The vehicle remains still for an agonizing five minutes. Lumen watches the taillights flare to life. He backs slowly out of the parking space.
She sighs. She turns her head, looks at the little houses on the street, many of them in disrepair, once-bright paint fading off the chipped stucco. The hibiscus shrubs have grown wild, ragged, untamed by any loving hand. The palms in the yards are stunted, the leaves turning yellow.
She returns her attention to the building. The doors open for a pair of women she doesn’t recognize. One’s white, the other Latina. Both wear skirt-suits and sensible heels. They tread the long concrete path to the sidewalk, looking at each other, talking. They turn left, onto the sidewalk.
Lumen leans her head back into the seat. She wipes the sweat off her face. She thinks about taking another drink but doesn’t. She thinks about the heat, hot it’s softened into her bones, settled like a swoon into her blood. She thinks about him, Will Graham; she imagines him emerging from the building, the sparse and inscrutable rhythm of his body, his blank face turned in her direction.
She closes her eyes, imagines recognition on his face. She wonders where it would start, how it would kindle there; at first she sees it in the mouth, its tightening, a flex in the jaws and then it begins with a twitch in his cheek, beneath both eyes, at the juncture between bone and the place where smile-lines are just beginning to lay their tracks in his skin. It tightens the corners of his mouth, climbs up into his eyes and unlocks the constant restlessness that lives there. Such a sight would swarm her, it would drown her in adrenaline. Buried deep in this fever dream, she feels her joints disable themselves, such softening a betrayal. Her body pours out a flood of sweat. Her heart pounds. It flings itself against the cage of her ribs, rattles the bones, cries out for release.
When she sees him in her mind, she knows: hiding in the topography of his face are a thousand ways to signal the beginning of a memory and all of them are shuttered. When his mouth opens in her mind, she knows: those secrets sing to her, each to each, across a deep and trembling darkness.
Her breath quickens.
She opens her eyes.
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Lumen Obscura