Author's note:

This is a prequel to Settling Accounts. It's going to get rather gory, thus the rating.

Disclaimer, in verse this time:

Hannibal Lecter's a killer so fine

I will admit, he is not mine

I do not own the slightest piece

Of the FBI agent named Starling, Clarice

They belong to the great Thomas Harris

Who's got lots of money to fly to Paris

A favorite author of me and of you

I've got a kid and a car payment, please don't sue.

OK, now you know why I write fics and not poetry.

"Whoever fights monsters should beware lest he become one himself. And when you look into the Abyss, the Abyss also looks into you." –Friedrich Nietzsche

Buenos Aires was a city under siege.

The first killings began in January. A girl disappeared and was reporting missing by her frantic parents. As happens all over the world, the police did not treat it seriously. A week or so later, her body was found in a garbage dump in the slums of Buenos Aires. Autopsy reports indicated that she had been kept alive for several days, and fed, but she had been tortured and finally suffered facial lacerations of a type never before seen. Then a second girl met the same fate a few months later. A third and fourth followed.

All of the murdered girls had not been the poor women forced into prostitution that one might expect as the victims of a serial killer. On the contrary; all of them had been the daughters of privilege. Their families were upper middle class and wealthy. In every case, a symbol of the girls' status had been left behind. In two cases, it was a parochial school badge ripped from their school blazers and left at the scene of their disappearance. In one, it was a necklace. In the last, it was a jeweled rosary.

Mothers all over the city guarded their daughters more closely. A new industry rose up in security guards, locks, mace, and stun guns. The first letter to the Buenos Aires Herald was sent in May, after the fourth girl disappeared. Rife with misspellings and written in Spanish, it claimed responsibility for the four girls' deaths, promised more, and gave a name to the nightmare stalking young women. El Desollador -- the Skinner.

The police had kept the facial mutilations under wraps. The Skinner's letter to the press forced them to admit what form they had taken. A very nervous police spokesperson had to admit in a local press conference that skin had been 'taken' from the murdered girls. He did not elaborate. It was probably in the public interest that he did not.

All four girls had been skinned. The form was not the same as an American serial killer, Buffalo Bill, had taken in years before. The girls' faces had been removed, as well as their eyes. The first girl had been sloppily done. The Skinner had improved his technique as he got more practice. The police stepped up patrols. Hundred of officers were on the streets in order to catch the Skinner.

Two people reading the Buenos Aires Herald were quite curious about the Skinner killings. Dr. Alonso Alvarez, a local medical school professor, and his wife Maria, a socialite. Their interest was threefold. First, because they themselves had a sixteen-year-old daughter named Susana. Like all parents, they were worried for the safety of their daughter. Secondly, because the first girl to go missing had been the daughter of one of Dr. Alvarez's co-workers. And thirdly and lastly, because they had once been known as Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. Clarice Starling had tracked down and killed Buffalo Bill. Dr. Lecter, in his escape from custody in Memphis, actually had removed a policeman's face and worn it. He was curious as to the technique of the Skinner.

They discussed with each other whether it would be possible to quietly volunteer their services. It was, unfortunately, impossible. Dr. Alvarez's days were spent teaching medical students, performing experiments in the University lab, and covering occasional shifts at the university hospital's ER. Although he had been trained in psychiatry, he had not practiced it since they had come to Buenos Aires. It would not be feasible for him to present himself to the authorities as any type of expert. Likewise, while Clarice Starling had the capture of Buffalo Bill under her belt, Maria Alvarez was merely known in upper-crust circles as a socialite and volunteer for her preferred charities. They would either be dismissed as helpful cranks, or worse, draw suspicion to themselves.

But so far Susana remained safe. To an extent, this did not surprise her parents. She was intelligent, physically fit, and had better judgment than most of her peers. She also knew pistolcraft about as well as any police-academy graduate and knew her way around knives. She did, however, insist on driving herself to and from school.

And so, on the afternoon of April 2, 2019, sixteen-year-old Susana Alvarez was leaving the private academy she attended and heading for the parking lot. For her sixteenth birthday, she had been given a ten-year-old Mustang she liked a great deal. It was red and a convertible. It was stock when she bought it, but her father had quietly had the car taken to Bonarense Motorsports, where they had installed a supercharger and tweaked a few other things to make the car faster. When the engine was on, the entire car rumbled, down deep in her guts. Susana loved the car's power. Behind the wheel, she felt powerful herself.

From her book bag, she heard a muffled electronic tone. She pulled her satellite phone out of the outer pocket as she unlocked her door and slid behind the wheel. She glanced at the display. PAPÀ. Why was he calling her right after school?

She pushed TALK on the phone and held it to her ear.

"Hello, Susana," a metallic, mellifluous voice said.

"Hello, Papa," she answered in English. Dr. Lecter never spoke Spanish with his daughter. He spoke English, French, or Italian with her. "Are you calling to check on me? Because I haven't even left the school yet." Since the Skinner killings became public knowledge, Susana had been expected to call her father when she arrived at home. Dr. Lecter knew firsthand what monsters lurked in the world.

"No, actually. I wanted to ask a favor of you."

"What?"

"I need to send a parcel overseas and I'm dreadfully tied up here. Would you come fetch it and send it off for me?"

He waited tensely. Susana, like any sixteen-year-old, had fought with her parents as she grew up. The gift of the car had brought about some peace in recent months.

Susana thought for a moment. The university campus was on the other side of the city, but then again, driving a red convertible on the Buenos Aires highway on a warm spring day was hardly an unpleasant thought.

"Um, sure. I can. Don't you have a secretary, though?"

"She's out today. Allergies. And please don't say 'sure'. Peasants speak like that."

Susana rolled her eyes. "I am most humbly sorry. Please accept my most abject apologies." She adopted a mock English accent.

"That's more like it."

"I'll be by around…," she checked her watch. "las dos y media."

"Pardon?"

"Two and half. Two-thirty, I mean."

"Excellent. I'll leave your name at the desk."

"Okay," she said, and hung up. The driver's seat was leather and comfortably warm. She lowered the power top and started the engine. She donned a pair of sunglasses. The pleasing vibration of the engine filled the cockpit. Susana revved the engine a few times, dropped it into gear, and drove off with a great whirl of lateral acceleration. The Mustang's tires screeched. Susana was pleased. She liked doing that.

A pretty girl in Buenos Aires will usually get noticed. Doubly so when she is behind the wheel of a convertible sports car in the left lane. Susana amused herself on the highway by passing other cars. If they pulled over and let her, or otherwise didn't look interesting, she simply passed them. If they made an issue of it, or if there were boys close to her age in the car, she made a show of passing them at ninety or faster. The Mustang could blow the doors of most of the other traffic.

She had 88.5 FM on the radio. Foreigner was chopping their way through 'Hot Blooded'. A few boys beeped their horns at her. She either beeped back, stepped up the gas or waved. Her hair blew in the wind. She kept time with the steering wheel, singing along as she knew the lyrics….and there was her exit.

Susana didn't know many English curses, except the ones she had heard from her mother. Nonetheless, she strung them out in an impressive list and then tacked on her more extensive Spanish repertoire. She was able to get into the other lane and sort of bulldoze a way to the off-ramp. She ignored the curses and lewd proposals thrown in her wake.

The university was not far, and Susana turned down the university's main drag and parked in front a large building marked ESCUELA DE MEDICINA. She ran up the steps and gave her name to the bored student and ran past him down the hall. As she took the corner, she bumped into a janitor busy mopping the floor. His bucket of dirty rinse-water spilled all over the floor. Susana was horrified.

"Perdoname. Lo siento muchisimo," she said. Not much was going right. The janitor simply looked at her and sighed.

"Es nada. No problema. Pase usted."

She continued on to her father's office. A plaque on his door read Prof. Alonso Alvarez. She pushed open the door. He was not at his desk. Dr. Lecter's office was decorated with a great deal of china and antiques. A skeleton hung in the corner. A large print of 'Wound Man' hung on the wall. Susana looked at it for a long moment. In the far corner was another door, and she opened it and proceeded into his lab.

Dr. Lecter was in his medical lab, holding a mouse in his hand. Dr. Lecter's hands were small and well formed for a man's hands. In his other hand was a syringe. The mouse squeaked in mortal fear, as if caught by a predator.

"There, there," he told the mouse, and gave it an injection.

"A patient, papa?" Susana asked, smiling.

He turned and saw his daughter.

"Ah. Hello, Susana. Thank you for coming. No, this little fellow is part of a university study I am participating in."

"Is he going to live?"

The mouse squirmed. Dr. Lecter put the mouse back in its cage. It eyed him suspiciously for a moment and then retreated to its water bottle, where it soothed itself with a hearty drink.

"I should hope so. We're testing out the efficacy of a new antibiotic. That's what I need you for, actually." He indicated a brown parcel on the table. "The Ministry of Health is demanding this right away or they will require us to start from the outset again."

Susana nodded and took up the package. She noticed a covered gurney against the wall.

"Is that—" she asked, then stopped.

Dr. Lecter pulled himself up to his full height. "That is a cadaver. This is a medical school, dear Susana."

"But you didn't…did you?"

"I did not." Since beginning his new life in Buenos Aires, Dr. Lecter had found a type of peace. He had not killed anyone in years, and even that he had been sorely provoked. The occasional ER shifts he covered satisfied his need to see human misery. Although he had been tempted at times, especially with rude and hysterical patients, he was quite happy with his new life – money, a strong marriage, a lovely, intelligent daughter – and did not deem it worth the risk.

"Is there any good meat left or is he just full of formaldehyde?" She grinned impishly.

"Susana. Please. I need him to instruct students. And you shouldn't discuss that here."

She looked around. "It's just you and me." She squatted and looked in the mouse's cage. "He looks like he can keep his mouth shut."

He handed her a parcel wrapped in brown paper. "Here is your parcel, Susana," he said. "Thank you so much."

"You're trying to get rid of me," she accused her father.

"How about that. Now please. DHL Express closes in an hour."

Susana pooched out her lower lip at her father, but left with the package. As she departed her father's office, she almost collided with a tall, swarthy man in a white lab coat. He looked at her severely.

"Excuse me," she said, surprised.

"I don't think I've seen you around here before," the tall man said.

"I'm picking up this package for my papa," she answered.

Dr. Lecter stuck his head into the office.

"Ah, I see you've met. Dr. Higuara, my daughter, Susana. Susana, that is Dr. Higuara, one of the other professors here."

"Nice to meet you," Susana said. Dr. Higuara's look was quite penetrating. He had been the subject of many crushes from the secretarial pool. His eyes were very dark, almost black. It was hard to tell where the pupil stopped and the iris began. His hair was similarly black.

"Alonso, I didn't know you had such an attractive daughter," he said. His voice was deep, rich, and mellifluous.

Dr. Lecter did not care for the way in which his colleague was looking at his daughter.

"Indeed, that's her. Come on in the lab, Ramon. I'd like you to see the results."

Susana broke eye contact with Dr. Higuara, blushed, and fled the hall. On the way out she saw the janitor again. He had almost made it to the end of the hall with his mop.

"I'm really sorry about that before," she murmured.

"It's no problem, señorita, really."

As she headed out to the exit, a voice called her back. The student behind the security desk demanded that she sign out as well as in. Susana signed her name and ran out to the Mustang. She pulled out with a screech and a roar of the powerful American engine.

The Skinner watched Susana go. He already had number five tucked away, learning her lessons. He thought about Susana's trim body, her expensive clothing, and that Mustang parked outside. He thought about those magnificent, rare maroon eyes in a jar on his closet shelf.

She would be his number six.