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The first time, it wasn’t intentional.
Will was assigned to homicide, not crisis negotiation.
Will wasn’t good with people after all, not the way you needed to be if you wanted to talk someone off a metaphorical cliff. Hostage negotiators needed to be reassuring. Will was unsettling. Hostage negotiators often had to lie smoothly, without hesitation, and lies from Will were halting and obvious things.
Hostage negotiators also had to, sometimes, be unyielding, even in the face of anguish. They had to be able to force themselves to deal with the consequences of their failures, with the deaths of people they were speaking to moments before. This, it was assumed, was something Will couldn’t do, even though, chasing down serial killers, he did it every day.
What his teachers, his superiors, didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, was that for Will, the pain of the victims already dead was no less than the pain of those victims still living. It was the killers on which he focused, yes, because it was them he needed to find. But the minds of the victims were there too, in every scene, in every investigation, their agony recreated in his brain just as easily as their killer’s satisfaction. It was something he tried to avoid, when he could, because it was of little use and did not make his job easier. But it was always there. He seemed indifferent to the victims of the killings, not because he was indifferent, but because the distance was the only thing that made the job possible.
So, the first time Will took on the role, it was an accident.
The killer they found had been kidnapping young men, swimmers and surfers mostly, lurking under the surface of the water with a scuba tank and then pulling them down. Will understood that the killer loved to see that strength, so present in their muscles and finely tuned bodies, drain away as they struggled in an element they had tried, and failed, to master.
The killer would attach chains to his victims, weighted with an iron ball held aloft only by an air-bladder that dwarfed it in size. After he had dragged his victim under the surface, he would attach one end of the chain to his victim’s ankle and then burst the bladder. And then he would watch, scuba tank giving him all the time he needed, as the victim was slowly dragged down, struggling for light and air they couldn’t reach.
When the victim finally hit the seabed, he would hang in front of them in the water, just out of reach, fins moving slowly, eyes obscured by a mask, and watch them die.
Sometimes, when the water was particularly deep, too deep for anyone to reach the bottom without drowning, or when the victim was especially strong, especially vibrant, he would give his victims their own air tank, just as the metal began to pull them beneath the waves.
In those times, it sometimes took hours for the victim to die. He would watch as they begged, pleaded as well as it was possible to plead without words. He watched as they tried to remain calm, tried not to hyperventilate, tried to make the air last as long as it could. He watched the dawning panic as they took their final breath and realized that the tank was empty. And of course, he watched them die.
It was during one of those cases that Will found him. When the disappearance of Adrian Fallon was reported over the radio from a beachside town almost an hour away, homicide was called in. It was assumed the victim was dead and that the serial killer would be long gone by the time they arrived.
But Will looked at an underwater topographical map of the region and saw the cliff, a dozen meters from shore, where the sand dropped away into a void, whose bottom could only be found 300 feet beneath the surface of the sea, past the point where all but the most experienced divers dared to go. And Will looked at the photograph they sent of the vanished man, who bore a face reminiscent of the killer’s other victims, but who features held a perfect symmetry normally seen only in models and movie stars. He thought about the increasing frequency of the killings, an indication that the killer knew the law was closing in, that there might not be many more chances to watch someone die, to watch the building terror that comes before the end.
Adrian, Will knew, would still be alive.
(And Will imagined the crushing weight of the water, not enough to hurt, not yet, but enough to be unignorably present. He imagined the light, so far above, unreachable. He imagined the shape hovering in front of him in the water, faceless and waiting.)
And he knew that he could save this man.
He didn’t try to convince his supervisors, who were practical, and trained to focus on the aftermath of death. Instead he spoke of decompression sickness, of how, for a dive this deep, the killer would have to make several long decompression stops on the way to the surface, to prevent his own death from decompression sickness. He explained that the killer, to make those stops at the correct depths, would need a line that extended beneath the surface of the water. He told them that all they needed to do was find that line, and wait for the killer to return to the surface.
In a helicopter, the town turned out to be only twenty minutes away.
The driverless boat, and the buoy to which it was tied, were not hard to find once you knew to look. Once Will had helped them locate the boat, they left him on shore, in a seaside bar close to town. It wasn’t Will’s job to catch the killer after all, especially as new to the FBI as he was, and despite the way he unsettled his colleagues, they were trying to maintain a base level of responsibility for his welfare.
Will watched them leave. He ordered a soda he had no intention of drinking. And, once they were gone, Will went and rented a boat and diving gear. There was time, though not an overabundance of it. He knew boats, and he also knew diving, though not as well. In the face of his easy familiarity, and willingness to pay (with his ‘ necessary expenses only ’ FBI credit card), he had no trouble getting what he needed.
He wasn’t worried about running into the other FBI agents, waiting at the killer's boat. Because the killer had not docked his boat or put his shot-line, anywhere close to where his victim would be killed.
And so, boat rented, equipment ready, Will drove out to the drop in the sea and dropped his own line. He also dropped several tanks of air. It would be expensive to pay for them, as the dive shops typically expected to get them back, but that was not his primary concern.
And then he descended.
He found them quickly. Will knew the killer well enough now to choose the spot just as the killer would have, though his reasoning was not a thing that would be easy to put into words.
They cut a strange figure in the low light. A young man, panicked, swimming upward and going nowhere. A chain, dark and glinting, connecting his ankle to the seafloor. The killer, hanging just out of reach, perfectly still, watching.
Adrian, blind with panic, did not notice Will’s arrival. So it was the killer who saw Will first.
As Will had guessed, the man was old, hair fully silver. He was strong, but it was a fading strength, the best that could be maintained by a man nearing the last decade or two of his life.
When he saw Will, the killer’s first thought was that it was bad luck. Another deep diver, stumbling upon the crime scene. Will could see him figuring out his chances, deciding whether to flee (and lose this, miss that last bright moment where his victim died) or try to kill Will and his diving partner, and salvage the situation.
And then he realized Will was diving alone.
People did not dive alone, as a rule.
They also, typically, did not carry around an extra air tank, as Will was doing, as it made diving impractical and unwieldily, and could lead to damage to the local ecosystem as the metal tank inevitably dragged against the ground.
Will dropped the tank, took out his underwater slate, and wrote, angled so the killer could see and the victim could not:
He won’t remember this.
Whatever the killer had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t this, and so the man paused, committing neither to flight or to a second murder.
Adrian saw Will then, and began his struggles anew, pleading for help as clearly as he could without words. For Will, the pleas were more than clear enough. He did not let it show on his face. He remained outwardly calm, any stress he could not disguise hidden instead by the distortion of the water and the low light.
Will wiped the slate clean and wrote, Wait. Be still. Look up. and turned it to the victim. After a minute, the younger man obeyed.
Will wiped the slate clean again and once again wrote:
He won’t remember this.
And then:
Every lesson you’ve taught-
(Wipe, keep going, there were not room for many words on the slate )
- has been forgotten.
(Wipe. Write.)
Death has no memories.
(Wipe. Wait.)
Adrian, as instructed, was still starting at the distant sky. His breathing had slowed, buying Will some time.
Will hung in the water, slightly above them both.
This serial killer brought deaths that belonged more in nightmares than reality. Every one of his victims had died, not just in terror, but in a mess of surreal confusion, feeling that their death is real, but sure that it cannot be.
The killer had watched that confusion, that disbelief, from the outside.
Now, Will had brought that surrealism to him, had put the killer in that space between confusion and disbelief, of knowing that the experience you are having is not something that matches reality. In doing so, Will pulled the killer farther from practical concerns, farther from fear of capture and jail and concrete walls, and further into the world the killer had created for his victims, for himself.
Will wrote:
This one will be the last.
Not just for you.
Others will drown-
-after you are gone.
But your lesson-
-is what comes-
-before the drowning.
Will backed away, pushing himself farther from the victim and the killer, holding his slate up. The killer followed him those few feet, until he can read Will’s slate, but his victim cannot.
At this sign of abandonment, the Adrian’s panic returned in full force, and he began thrashing in the water. Trying to swim towards the light, pulling the chain taught, and then letting himself sink back towards the sand, so he could tug futilely at the iron locked around his leg.
The killer glanced back, for even in water, screaming makes a sound, and then looked at Will.
Will knew that, once again, the older man was considering killing Will. They were close now, the killer a foot or two away. If he tried, he would probably succeed. Will showed no fear, kept his breathe steady and wrote:
They have found you.
(Wipe. Write)
They wait at your line.
(Wipe. Write)
They wait at the shore.
(Wipe. Write)
This will end-
-when he forgets.
And people-
-will still believe
-they belong in the sea.
Will was increasing his chances of death with every line. The thought of capture brought desperation, as did the thought of the killer's work all being in vain. Killing Will, and squeezing every drop of relief from his last victim’s life, was becoming more tempting with every sentence Will wrote.
(Wipe. Write)
Unless-
-he remembers.
If we leave-
-he will be alone-
-with the light-
-and the fading air-
-and the ocean that-
-is no longer his.
If we leave-
-the mark on him-
-will never be erased.
After you are gone-
-he will remember.
When he dies-
-sixty years from now-
-he will remember.
And then Will waited, because any further words would weaken this.
The killer turned back towards his victim, who was still struggling for a surface he could not reach. And then he turned back to Will and, after a long moment, nodded.
Will returned the nod, and, without looking back, began to swim towards his boat.
They both heard Adrian scream into the water.
The killer, after a moment, followed.
They found Will’s line.
The killer saw the two tanks still resting on the seabed. Looked at them.
Here, now, with safety for the killer in view, and with Will having to depressurize alongside him, was when Will’s life was once again at risk.
Will took out his slate, wrote:
I will bring the air-
-to him-
-while you rise.
He will be alone-
-a long time.
The killer, after a moment, nodded again. Will watched as he began to rise.
And then, as quickly and as unobtrusively as he could, Will reached out and handcuffed the man’s right ankle to the line.
He darted back immediately. It wouldn’t have been fast enough, but it took the man a moment to realize what the click meant, to realize his foot could no longer move freely.
He turned to Will in a fury.
A precaution-
Will wrote, hanging back.
- otherwise you might-
-decide-
-that I should also learn.
(Wipe. Write.)
Rise carefully.
You went very deep.
I will return-
-with the key.
(And the killer thought that Will, too, needed this line. Did not know that Will had already discovered the location of the killer’s own. Will could see the hope of escape forming. The killer could drown Will easily enough after Will returned. After all, he had drowned many who were stronger. And, it didn’t matter if people were waiting for him on the shore. With Will’s boat, it would be a simple thing to escape off into the sea.)
So the killer, plan in place, confidence restored, resumed his rise to the surface.
And Will brought the tanks, slowly, laboriously, over to Adrian. That made three tanks in total, plus the one Will was wearing. It would be enough.
It’s okay, Will wrote.
I work for the FBI.
I’m going to get-
-you out of here.
And he did. It wasn’t easy. The lock chaining the man to the weight was, unfortunately, not something Will could unlock without tools. But, Will attached his own air bladder to the weight (he could not risk bringing a second), which was enough to make it moveable, and slowly, laboriously, they made their way across the sea floor, toward’s the killer's line.
The FBI divers were waiting there, but seeing two people approaching, instead of one, was enough to make them hesitate. And then they saw the weight, and they recognize Will (helped by him holding up the slate which had I am Will Graham written on it).
It took more time, air, and swim bladders, but eventually they got both Will and Adrian to the surface safely. They dispatched a boat to pick up the killer, who had been trying, and failing, to cut Will’s line with his diving knife.
————
Will was in trouble.
Serious trouble actually. It was reckless. He could have died. He used the FBI credit card without permission (this seemed, at several points, to be more significant than the fact that he could have died).
But, also, it was hard not to admire guts like that.
And it was hard to argue with Will’s results.
And Will was thoughtful, afterward. Usually, after catching a killer, it takes weeks to shake off the weight of their convictions. And Michael Bennet’s convictions were still there, still whispering to Will about the beauty of a life lost beneath the waves, of the beauty of that final hopeless struggle for air, for a surface that cannot be reached.
But, Adrian Fallon was also there. The exultant joy of that first breath of fresh air, after his head broke the surface. The feel of the iron cuff falling from his leg. The people, waiting for him on the shore, who had been called the moment it was clear he would make it out alive. The feeling of surviving past the point where death was a certainty. And there would be trauma there too, Will knew. For the next few weeks, he felt an echo of fear whenever he thought of the sea and the showers he took were brief. But Adrian Fallon was alive and free and, though Will could feel both of them, Adrian’s desire for life far outweighed Bennet’s wish for his death.
He requested a switch in divisions. He was more honest about it than he usually was, to the FBI psychologist who is trying to figure out if he can even stay on the force. Will explained, as simply as he could, that he could do what he does because of empathy. And, chasing down serial killers, he used his ability to empathize with a person to then put that person in the situation they least want. He was putting on someone’s skin, and using that to break everything they cared about. He would much rather, he said, be working with people than against them. He also mentioned that his ability to recreate the past, or at least a likely interpretation of it, could serve just as well to put together an image of a likely future.
They let him transfer. They also still decided to make him a consultant, rather than an official member of the FBI, but he could live with that.
It was not always pleasant. Sometimes he failed. Sometimes he failed badly. But, as a negotiator, people no longer viewed his reflected grief as a sign of growing psychosis. No one thought his guilt over the kidnapper they shot in the head was a sign that Will himself would become a kidnapper one day. When Will put himself into the mindset of a killer or an abusive husband, and used that mindset to figure out how to convince them to let their victims go, they didn't view it as a massive warning sign. In homicide, identifying with the villain was an uncommon tool, and a suspicious one. As a hostage negotiator, identifying with the villain, understanding them, is an essential part of the job.
When he’s sent to see Hannibal Lector, ten years into his career, after a particularly bad job where a bomber could not be talked down from blowing up a building containing twenty civilians, it’s not because he’s erratic. It’s because anyone would need to see a therapist, after something like that. And, his boss knows, it might be easier if the therapy is somewhat unofficial, something that doesn’t have to go on record. Hannibal Lector is a friend of a friend, and his boss has heard good things. And, she insists, Will really ought to be talking to someone.