SUBLIME, Hannibal Lecter

xiv. Until you

Sloane looked down, defeated. Still, maybe now Jack would finally see the truth and pull Will from the case.

"I thought I was responsible for it," Will confessed.

Sloane shuddered at his words.

"What are you saying? You thought that you killed that woman in there?" Jack asked.

"Yes. Sometimes, with, uh, what I do—" He tried to explain, but Jack cut him off again.

"What you do is you take all of the evidence available at a crime scene. You extrapolate. You reconstruct the thinking of a killer. You don't think of yourself as the killer."

"I got lost in the reconstruction," Will insisted. "Juts for a second. Just a blink."

"I know you don't like to be the cause for concern, but I am officially concerned about you," Jack concluded.

"Officially?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Hm. I thought the reason you had me seeing Dr. Lecter and not an FBI psychiatrist is so my mental wellbeing stays... unofficial."

"I just want to be careful with you," Jack told him. "We don't want to break you here. Is that what's happening? Have I broken you?"

"Do you have anyone that does this better unbroken than I do broken?" Will asked sarcastically.

"Fear makes you rude, Will."

Sloane stepped forward, fed up. "Fine. Then we can go. Come on, Will. I'll take you home."

Jack stared at her, wide-eyed. "You have work to finish."

She whipped around, irritated. "What the hell are you talking about? You saw what happened. We don't have to finish a damn thing."

"Agent Winters! Return to the crime scene immediately, or you'll be sent home!"

And Sloane was about to do it. She was about to scream and let him send her home—but something stopped her. Maybe it was the pleading look in Will's eyes, or the fear of leaving him alone. But she stayed silent, shot Jack one last glare, and returned to the scene with Will at her side.

When they re-entered the crime scene, the forensic team said nothing, trying not to draw attention to Will.

"Her name was Beth LeBeau," Zeller said. "She drowned on her own blood."

"And what she didn't drown on is all over the floor and under the bed. She was trying to hide from him," Price explained.

"He dragged her there. He was waiting under the bed for her," Sloane pointed sharply to where the woman had been found.

"Fought to claw her way out," Beverly noted.

"He knew her," Will deduced. "Someone who cared about her, or thought he did," he said as the two agents examined the scratched photographs.

"He cared too much," Beverly observed.

"So, we're looking for boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, coworkers, the guy who bags her groceries" Jack said. Sloane hadn't even noticed him enter the room.

She muttered under her breath, annoyed but unheard.

"I've got a clean set of prints on the knife handle," Price said, glancing at Will. "I assume they're yours."

"Sorry," Will murmured.

Price waved it off. "There's more dermal tissue, presumably the killer's, but the skin is so diseased or damaged it didn't leave any usable prints."