RED DRAGON
Thomas Harris
One can only see
what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.
-ALPHONSE BERTILLON
. . . For Mercy
has a human heart,
Pity a human
face,
And Love, the
human form divine,
And Peace, the
human dress.
-WILLIAM BLAKE, Songs of
Innocence
( The Divine Image )
Cruelty has a
Human Heart,
And Jealousy a
Human Face,
Terror the Human
Form Divine,
And Secrecy the
Human Dress.
The Human Dress
is forged Iron,
The Human Form a
fiery Forge,
The Human Face a
Furnace seal’d,
The Human Heart
its hungry Gorge.
-WILLIAM BLAKE, Songs of
Experience
( A Divine Image )
Will Graham sat Crawford down at a picnic table between the
house and the ocean and gave him a glass of iced tea.
Jack Crawford looked at
the pleasant old house, salt-silvered wood in the clear light. "I should
have caught you in Marathon when you got off work," he said. "You
don't want to talk about it here."
"I don't want to
talk about it anywhere, Jack. You've got to talk about it, so let's have it.
Just don't get out any pictures. If you brought pictures, leave them in the
briefcase -Molly and Willy will be back soon."
"How much do you
know?"
"What was in the
Miami Herald and the Times," Graham said. "Two families
killed in their houses a month apart. Birmingham and Atlanta. The circumstances
were similar."
"Not similar. The
same."
"How many
confessions so far?"
"Eighty-six when I
called in this afternoon," Crawford said. "Cranks. None of them knew
details. He smashes the mirrors and uses the pieces. None of them knew
that."
"What else did you
keep out of the papers?"
"He's blond,
right-handed and really strong, wears a size-eleven shoe. He can tie a bowline.
The prints are all smooth gloves."
"You said that in
public."
"He's not too
comfortable with locks," Crawford said. "Used a glass cutter and a
suction cup to get in the house last time. Oh, and his blood's AB
positive."
"Somebody hurt
him?"
"Not that we know
of. We typed him from semen and saliva. He's a secretor." Crawford looked
out at the flat sea. "Will, I want to ask you something. You saw this in
the papers. The second one was all over the TV. Did you ever think about giving
me a call?"
"Why not?"
"There weren't many
details at first on the one in Birmingham. It could have been anything -
revenge, a relative."
"But after the
second one, you knew what it was."
"Yeah. A psychopath.
I didn't call you because I didn't want to. I know who you have already to work
on this. You've got the best lab. You'd have Heimlich at Harvard, Bloom at the
University of Chicago-"
"And I've got you
down here fixing fucking boat motors."
"I don't think I'd
be all that useful to you, Jack. I never think about it anymore."
"Really? You caught
two. The last two we had, you caught."
"How? By doing the
same things you and the rest of them are doing."
"That's not entirely
true, Will. It's the way you think."
"I think there's
been a lot of bullshit about the way I think."
"You made some jumps
you never explained."
"The evidence was
there," Graham said.
"Sure. Sure there
was. Plenty of it - afterward. Before the collar there was so damn little we
couldn't get probable cause to go in."
"You have the people
you need, Jack. I don't think I'd be an improvement. I came down here to get
away from that."
"I know it. You got
hurt last time. Now you look all right."
"I'm all right. It's
not getting cut. You've been cut."
"I've been cut, but
not like that."
"It's not getting
cut. I just decided to stop. I don't think I can explain it."
"If you couldn't
look at it anymore, God knows I'd understand that."
"No. You know-having
to look. It's always bad, but you get so you can function anyway, as long as
they're dead. The hospital, interviews, that's worse. You have to shake it off
and keep on thinking. I don't believe I could do it now. I could make myself
look, but I'd shut down the thinking."
"These are all dead,
Will," Crawford said as kindly as he could.
Jack Crawford heard the rhythm and syntax of his own speech
in Graham's voice. He had heard Graham do that before, with other people. Often
in intense conversation Graham took on the other person's speech patterns. At
first, Crawford had thought he was doing it deliberately, that it was a gimmick
to get the back-and-forth rhythm going.
Later Crawford realized that Graham did it involuntarily,
that sometimes he tried to stop and couldn't.
Crawford dipped into his jacket pocket with two fingers. He
flipped two photographs across the table, face up.
"All dead," he said.
Graham stared at him a moment before picking up the
pictures.
They were only snapshots: A woman, followed by three
children and a duck, carried picnic items up the bank of a pond. A family stood
behind a cake.
After half a minute he put the photographs down again. He
pushed them into a stack with his finger and looked far down the beach where
the boy hunkered, examining something in the sand. The woman stood watching,
hand on her hip, spent waves creaming around her ankles. She leaned inland to
swing her wet hair off her shoulders.
Graham, ignoring his guest, watched Molly and the boy for as
long as he had looked at the pictures.
Crawford was pleased. He kept the satisfaction out of his
face with the same care he had used to choose the site of this conversation.
He thought he had Graham. Let it cook.
Three remarkably ugly dogs wandered up and flopped to the
ground around the table.
"My God," Crawford said.
"These are probably dogs," Graham explained.
"People dump small ones here all the time. I can give away the cute ones.
The rest stay around and get to be big ones."
"They're fat enough."
"Molly's a sucker for strays."
"You've got a nice life here, Will. Molly and the boy.
How old is he?"
"Eleven."
"Good-looking kid. He's going to be taller than
you."
Graham nodded. "His father was. I'm lucky here. I know
that."
"I wanted to bring Phyllis down here. Florida. Get a
place when I retire, and stop living like a cave fish. She says all her friends
are in Arlington."
"I meant to thank her for the books she brought me in the hospital,
but I never did. Tell her for me."
"I'll tell her."
Two small bright birds lit on the table, hoping to find jelly. Crawford
watched them hop around until they flew away.
"Will, this freak seems to be in phase with the moon. He killed the
Jacobis in Birmingham on Saturday night, June 28, full moon. He killed the
Leeds family in Atlanta night before last, July 26. That's one day short of a
lunar month. So if we're lucky we may have a little over three weeks before he
does it again."
"I don't think you want to wait here in the Keys and read about the
next one in your Miami Herald. Hell, I'm not the pope, I'm not saying
what you ought to do, but I want to ask you, do you respect my judgment,
Will?"
"Yes."
"I think we have a better chance to get him fast if you help. Hell,
Will, saddle up and help us. Go to Atlanta and Birmingham and look, then come
on to Washington. Just TDY."
Graham did not reply.
Crawford waited while five waves lapped the beach. Then he got up and
slung his suit coat over his shoulder. "Let's talk after dinner."
"Stay and eat."
Crawford shook his head. "I'll come back later. There'll be
messages at the Holiday Inn and I'll be a while on the phone. Tell Molly
thanks, though."
Crawford's rented car raised thin dust that settled on the bushes beside
the shell road.
Graham returned to the table. He was afraid that this was how he would
remember the end of Sugarloaf Key-ice melting in two tea glasses and paper
napkins fluttering off the redwood table in the breeze and Molly and Willy far
down the beach.
# # #
Sunset on Sugarloaf, the herons still and the red sun swelling.
Will Graham and Molly Foster Graham sat on a bleached drift log, their
faces orange in the sunset, backs in violet shadow. She picked up his hand.
"Crawford stopped by to see me at the shop before he
came out here," she said. "He asked directions to the house. I tried
to call you. You really ought to answer the phone once in a while. We saw the
car when we got home and went around to the beach."
"What else did he ask you?"
"How you are."
"And you said?"
"I said you're fine and he should leave you the hell
alone. What does he want you to do?"
"Look at evidence. I'm a forensic specialist, Molly.
You've seen my diploma."
"You mended a crack in the ceiling paper with your
diploma, I saw that." She straddled the log to face him. "If you
missed your other life, what you used to do, I think you'd talk about it. You
never do. You're open and calm and easy now. . .I love that."
"We have a good time, don't we?"
Her single styptic blink told him he should have said
something better. Before he could fix it, she went on.
"What you did for Crawford was bad for you. He has a
lot of other people - the whole damn government I guess - why can't he leave us
alone?"
"Didn't Crawford tell you that? He was my supervisor
the two times I left the FBI Academy to go back to the field. Those two cases
were the only ones like this he ever had, and Jack's been working a long time.
Now he's got a new one. This kind of psychopath is very rare. He knows I've
had. . . experience."
"Yes, you have," Molly said. His shirt was
unbuttoned and she could see the looping scar across his stomach. It was finger
width and raised, and it never tanned. It ran down from his left hipbone and
turned up to notch his rib cage on the other side.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter did that with a linoleum knife. It
happened a year before Molly met Graham, and it very nearly killed him. Dr.
Lecter, known in the tabloids as "Hannibal the Cannibal," was the
second psychopath Graham had caught.
When he finally got out of the hospital, Graham resigned
ftom the Federal Bureau of Investigation, left Washington and found a job as a
diesel mechanic in the boatyard at Marathon in the Florida Keys. It was a trade
he grew up with. He slept in a trailer at the boatyard until Molly and her
good ramshackle house on Sugarloaf Key.
Now he straddled the drift log and held both her hands. Her
feet burrowed under his.
"All right, Molly. Crawford thinks I have a knack for
the monsters. It's like a superstition with him."
"Do you believe it?"
Graham watched three pelicans fly in line across the tidal
flats. "Molly, an intelligent psychopath - particularly a sadist - is hard
to catch for several reasons. First, there's no traceable motive. So you can't
go that way. And most of the time you won't have any help from informants. See,
there's a lot more stooling than sleuthing behind most arrests, but in a case
like this there won't be any informants. He may not even know
that he's doing it. So you have to take whatever evidence you have and
extrapolate. You try to reconstruct his thinking. You try to find
patterns."
"And follow him and find him," Molly said.
"I'm afraid if you go after this maniac, or whatever he is - I'm afraid
he'll do you like the last one did. That's it. That's what scares me."
"He'll never see me or know my name, Molly. The police,
they'll have to take him down if they can find him, not me. Crawford just wants
another point of view."
She watched the red sun spread over the sea. High cirrus
glowed above it.
Graham loved the way she turned her head, artlessly giving
him her less perfect profile. He could see the pulse in her throat, and
remembered suddenly and completely the taste of salt on her skin. He swallowed
and said, "What the hell can I do?"
"What you've already decided. If you stay here and
there's more killing, maybe it would sour this place for you. High Noon and
all that crap. If it's that way, you weren't really asking."
"If I were asking, what would you say?"
"Stay here with me. Me. Me. Me. And Willy, I'd drag him
in if it would do any good. I'm supposed to dry my eyes and wave my hanky. If
things don't go so well, I'll have the satisfaction that you did the right
thing. That'll last about as long as taps. Then I can go home and switch one
side of the blanket on."
"I'd be at the back of the pack."
"Never in your life. I'm selfish, huh?"
"I don't care."
"Neither do I. It's keen and sweet here. All the things
that happen to you before make you know it. Value it, I mean."
He nodded.
"Don't want to lose it either way," she said.
"Nope. We won't, either."
Darkness fell quickly and Jupiter appeared, low in the
southwest.
They walked back to the house beside the rising gibbous
moon. Far out past the tidal flats, bait fish leaped for their lives.
# # #
Crawford came back after dinner. He had taken off his coat
and tie and rolled up his sleeves for the casual effect. Molly thought
Crawford's thick pale forearms were repulsive. To her he looked like a damnably
wise ape. She served him coffee under the porch fan and sat with him while
Graham and Willy went out to feed dogs. She said nothing. Moths batted softly
at the screens.
"He looks good, Molly," Crawford said. "You
both do - skinny and brown."
"Whatever I say, you'll take him anyway, won't
you?"
"Yeah. I have to. I have to do it. But I swear to God,
Molly, I'll make it as easy on him as I can. He's changed. It's great you got
married."
"He's better and better. He doesn't dream so often now.
He was really obsessed with the dogs for a while. Now he just takes care of
them; he doesn't talk about them all the time. You're his friend, Jack. Why
can't you leave him alone?"
"Because it's his bad luck to be the best. Because he
doesn't think like other people. Somehow he never got in a rut."
"He thinks you want him to look at evidence."
"I do want him to look at evidence. There's nobody
better with evidence. But he has the other thing too. Imagination, projection,
whatever. He doesn't like that part of it."
"You wouldn't like it either if you had it. Promise me
something, Jack. Promise me you'll see to it he doesn't get too close. I think
it would kill him to have to fight."
"He won't have to fight. I can promise you that."
When Graham finished with the dogs, Molly helped him pack.
CHAPTER 2
Will Graham drove slowly past the house where the Charles
Leeds family had lived and died. The windows were dark. One yard light burned.
He parked two blocks away and walked back through the warm night, carrying the
Atlanta police detectives' report in a card-board box.
Graham had insisted on
coming alone. Anyone else in the house would distract him -that was the reason
he gave Crawford. He had another, private reason: he was not sure how he would
act. He didn't want a face aimed at him all the time.
He had been all right at
the morgue.
The two-story brick home
was set back from the street on a wooded lot. Graham stood under the trees for
a long time looking at it. He tried to be still inside. In his mind a silver
pendulum swung in darkness. He waited until the pendulum was still.
A few neighbors drove by,
looking at the house quickly and looking away. A murder house is ugly to the
neighbors, like the face of someone who betrayed them. Only outsiders and
children stare.
The shades were up.
Graham was glad. That meant no relatives had been inside. Relatives always
lower the shades.
He walked around the side
of the house, moving carefully, not using his flashlight. He stopped twice to
listen. The Atlanta police knew he was here, but the neighbors did not. They
would be jumpy. They might shoot.
Looking in a rear window,
he could see all the way through to the light in the front yard, past
silhouettes of furniture. The scent of Cape jasmine was heavy in the air. A
latticed porch ran across most of the back. On the porch door was the seal of
the Atlanta police department. Graham removed the seal and went in.
The door from the porch
into the kitchen was patched with plywood where the police had taken out the
glass. By flashlight he unlocked it with the key the police had given him. He
wanted to turn on lights. He wanted to put on his shiny badge and make some
official noises to justify himself to the silent house where five people had
died. He did none of that. He went into the dark kitchen and sat down at the
breakfast table.
Two pilot lights on the
kitchen range glowed blue in the dark. He smelled furniture polish and apples.
The thermostat clicked
and the air conditioning came on. Graham started at the noise, felt a trickle of
fear. He was an old hand at fear. He could manage this one. He simply was
afraid, and he could go on anyway.
He could see and hear
better afraid; he could not speak as concisely, and fear sometimes made him
rude. Here, there was nobody left to speak to, there was nobody to offend
anymore.
Madness came into this
house through that door into this kitchen, moving on size-eleven feet. Sitting
in the dark, he sensed madness like a bloodhound sniffs a shirt.
Graham had studied the
detectives' report at Atlanta Homicide for most of the day and early evening.
He remembered that the light on the vent hood over the stove had been on when
the police arrived. He turned it on now.
Two framed samplers hung
on the wall beside the stove. One said "Kissin' don't last, cookin'
do." The other was "It's always to the kitchen that our friends best
like to come, to hear the heartbeat of the house, take comfort in its
hum."
Graham looked at his
watch. Eleven-thirty P.M. According to the pathologist, the deaths
occurred between eleven P.M. and one AM.
First there was the
entry. He thought about that . . .
The madman slipped the
hook on the outside screen door. Stood in the darkness of the porch and took
something from his pocket. A suction cup, maybe the base of a pencil sharpener
designed to stick to a desktop.
Crouched against the
wooden lower half of the kitchen door, the madman raised his head to peer
through the glass. He put out his tongue and licked the cup, pressed it to the
glass and flicked the lever to make it stick. A small glass cutter was attached
to the cup with string so that he could cut a circle.
Tiny squeal of the glass
cutter and one solid tap to break the glass. One hand to tap, one hand to hold
the suction cup. The glass must not fall. The loose piece of glass is slightly
egg-shaped because the string wrapped around the shaft of the suction cup as he
cut. A little grating noise as he pulls the piece of glass back outside. He
does not care that he leaves AB saliva on the glass.
His hand in the tight
glove snakes in through the hole, finds the lock. The door opens silently. He is inside. In the light
of the vent hood he can see his body in this strange kitchen. It is pleasantly
cool in the house.
Will Graham ate two
Di-Gels. The crackle of the cellophane irritated him as he stuffed it in his
pocket. He walked through the living room, holding his flashlight well away
from him by habit. Though he had studied the floor plan, he made one wrong turn
before he found the stairs. They did not creak.
Now he stood in the
doorway of the master bedroom. He could see faintly without the flashlight. A
digital clock on a nightstand projected the time on the ceiling and an orange
night light burned above the baseboard by the bathroom. The coppery smell of
blood was strong.
Eyes accustomed to the
dark could see well enough. The madman could distinguish Mr. Leeds from his
wife. There was enough light for him to cross the room, grab Leeds's hair and
cut his throat. What then? Back to the wall switch, a greeting to Mrs. Leeds
and then the gunshot that disabled her?
Graham switched on the
lights and bloodstains shouted at him from the walls, from the mattress and the
floor. The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in
this silent room full of dark stains drying.
Graham sat on the floor
until his head was quiet. Still, still, be still.
The number and variety of
the bloodstains had puzzled Atlanta detectives trying to reconstruct the crime.
All the victims were found slain in their beds. This was not consistent with
the locations of the stains.
At first they believed
Charles Leeds was attacked in his daughter's room and his body dragged to the
master bedroom. Close examination of the splash patterns made them reconsider.
The killer's exact
movements in the rooms were not yet deterrnined.
Now, with the advantage
of the autopsy and lab reports, Will Graham began to see how it had happened.
The intruder cut Charles
Leeds's throat as he lay asleep beside his wife, went back to the wall switch
and turned on the light - hairs and oil from Mr. Leeds's head were left on the
switchplate by a smooth glove. He shot Mrs. Leeds as she was rising, then went
toward the children's rooms.
Leeds rose with his cut
throat and tried to protect the children, losing great gouts of blood and an
unmistakable arterial spray as he tried to fight. He was shoved away, fell and
died with his daughter in her room.
One of the two boys was
shot in bed. The other boy was also found in bed, but he had dust balls in his
hair. Police believed he was dragged out from under his bed to be shot.
When all of them were
dead, except possibly Mrs. Leeds, the smashing of mirrors began, the selection
of shards, the further attention to Mrs. Leeds.
Graham had full copies of
all the autopsy protocols in his box. Here was the one on Mrs. Leeds. The
bullet entered to the right of her navel and lodged ii] her lumbar spine, but
she died of strangulation.
The increase in serotonin
and free histamine levels in the gunshot wound indicated she had lived at least
five minutes after she was shot. The histamine was much higher than the
serotonin, so she had not lived more than fifteen minutes. Most of her other
injuries were probably, but not conclusively, postmortem.
If the other injuries
were postmortem, what was the killer doing in the interval while Mrs. Leeds
waited to die? Graham wondered. Struggling with Leeds and killing the others,
yes, but that would have taken less than a minute. Smashing the mirrors. But
what else?
The Atlanta detectives
were thorough. They had measured and photographed exhaustively, had vacuumed
and grid-searched and taken the traps from the drains. Still, Graham looked for
himself.
From the police
photographs and taped outlines on the mattresses, Graham could see where the
bodies had been found. The evidence - nitrate traces on bedclothes in the case
of the gunshot wounds - indicated that they were found in positions
approximating those in which they died.
But the profusion of
bloodstains and matted sliding marks on the hall carpet remained unexplained.
One detective had theorized that some of the victims tried to crawl away from
the killer. Graham did not believe it - clearly the killer moved them after
they were dead and then put them back the way they were when he killed them.
What he did with Mrs.
Leeds was obvious. But what about the others? He had not disfigured them
further, as he did Mrs. Leeds. The children each suffered a single gunshot
wound in the head. Charles Leeds bled to death, with aspirated blood
contributing. The only additional mark on him was a superficial ligature mark
around his chest, believed to be postmortem. What did the killer do with them
after they were dead?
From his box Graham took
the police photographs, lab reports on the individual blood and
organic stains in the room and standard comparison plates of blood-drop
trajectories.
He went over the upstairs
rooms minutely, trying to match injuries to stains, trying to work backward. He
plotted each splash on a measured field sketch of the master bedroom, using the
standard comparison plates to estimate the direction and velocity of the
bloodfall. In this way he hoped to learn the positions the bodies were in at
different times.
Here was a row of three
bloodstains slanting up and around a corner of the bedroom wall. Here were
three faint stains on the carpet beneath them. The wall above the headboard on
Charles Leeds's side of the bed was bloodstained, and there were swipes along
the baseboards. Graham's field sketch began to look like a join-the-'lots
puzzle with no numbers. He stared at it, looked up at the room and back to the
sketch until his head ached.
He went into the bathroom
and took his last two Bufferin, scooping up water in his hand from the faucet
in the sink. He splashed water on his face and dried it with his shirttail.
Water spilled on the floor. He had forgotten that the trap was gone from the
drain. Otherwise the bathroom was undisturbed, except for the broken mirror and
traces of the red fingerprint powder called Dragon's Blood. Toothbrushes,
facial cream, razor, were all in place.
The bathroom looked as
though a family still used it. Mrs. Leeds's panty hose hung on the towel racks
where she had left them to dry. He saw that she cut the leg off a pair when it
had a runner so she could match two one-legged pairs, wear them at the same
time, and save money. Mrs. Leeds's small, homey economy pierced him; Molly did
the same thing.
Graham climbed out a
window onto the porch roof and sat on the gritty shingles. He hugged his knees,
his damp shirt pressed cold across his back, and snorted the smell of slaughter
out of his nose.
The lights of Atlanta
rusted the night sky and the stars were hard to see. The night would be clear
in the Keys. He could be watching shooting stars with Molly and Willy,
listening for the whoosh they solemnly agreed a shooting star must make. The
Delta Aquarid meteor shower was at its maximum, and Willy was up for it.
He shivered and snorted
again. He did not want to think of Molly now. To do so was tasteless as well as
distracting.
Graham had a lot of
trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty. There were no effective
partitions in his mind. What he saw and learned touched everything else he
knew. Some of the combinations were hard to live with. But he could not
anticipate them, could not block and repress. His learned values of decency and
propriety tagged along, shocked at his associations, appalled at his dreams;
sorry that in the bone arena of his skull there were no forts for what he
loved. His associations came at the speed of light. His value judgments were at
the pace of a responsive reading. They could never keep up and direct his
thinking.
He viewed his own
mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers. There was
nothing he could do about it.
Graham turned off the
lights in the Leeds house and went out through the kitchen. At the far end of
the hack porch, his flashlight revealed a bicycle and a wicker dog bed. There
was a doghouse in the backyard, a dog bowl by the steps.
The evidence indicated
the Leedses were surprised in their sleep. Holding the flashlight between his
chin and chest, he wrote a memo: Jack - where was the dog?
Graham drove hack to his
hotel. He had to concentrate on his driving, though there was little traffic at
four-thirty A.M. His head still ached and he watched for an all-night pharmacy.
He found one on
Peachtree. A slovenly rent-a-cop dozed near the door. A pharmacist in a jacket
dingy enough to highlight his dandruff sold Graham Bufferin. The glare in the
place was painful. Graham disliked young pharmacists. They had a
middle-of-the-litter look about them. They were often smug and he suspected
that they were unpleasant at home.
"What else?"
the pharmacist said, his fingers poised above the cash register keys.
"What else?"
The Atlanta FBI office
had booked him into an absurd hotel near the city's new Peachtree Center. It
had glass elevators shaped like milkweed pods to let him know he was really in
town now.
Graham rode up to his
room with two conventioneers wearing name tags with the printed greeting
"Hi!" They held to the rail and looked over the lobby as they
ascended.
"Looka yonder by the
desk - that's Wilma and them just now coming in," the larger one said.
"God damn, I'd love to tear off a piece of that."
"Fuck her till her
nose bleeds," the other one said.
Fear and rut, and anger
at the fear.
"Say, you know why a
woman has legs?"
"Why?"
"So she won't leave
a trail like a snail."
The elevator doors
opened.
"Is this it? This is
it," the larger one said. He lurched against the facing as he got off.
"This is the blind
leading the blind," the other one said.
Graham put his cardboard
box on the dresser in his room. Then he put it in a drawer where he could not
see it. He had had enough of the wide-eyed dead. He wanted to call Molly, but
it was too early.
A meeting was scheduled
for eight A.M. at the Atlanta police headquarters. He'd have little enough to
tell them.
He would try to sleep.
His mind was a busy rooming house with arguments all around him, and they were
fighting somewhere down the hall. He was numb and empty and he drank two
fingers of whiskey from his bathroom glass before he lay down. The darkness
pressed too closely on him. He turned on the bathroom light and went back to
bed. He pretended Molly was in the bathroom brushing her hair.
Lines from the autopsy
protocols sounded in his own voice, though he had never read them aloud:
". . . the feces was formed . . . a trace of talcum on the lower right
leg. Fracture of the medial orbit wall owing to insertion of mirror shard . .
."
Graham tried to think
about the beach at Sugarloaf Key, he tried to hear the waves. He pictured his
workbench in his mind and thought about the escapement for the water clock he
and Willy were building. He sang "Whiskey River" under his breath and
tried to run "Black Mountain Rag" through his head from one end to
the other. Molly's music. Doe Watson's guitar part was all right, but he always
lost it in the fiddle break. Molly had tried to teach him clog dancing in the
backyard and she was bouncing . . . and finally he dozed.
He woke in an hour, rigid
and sweating, seeing the other pillow silhouetted against the bathroom light
and it was Mrs. Leeds lying beside him bitten and torn, mirrored eyes and
blood like the legs of spectacles over her temples and ears. He could not turn
his head to face her. Brain screaming like a smoke alarm, he put his hand over
there and touched dry cloth.
Having acted, he felt
some immediate relief. He rose, his heart pounding, and put on a dry T-shirt.
He threw the wet one into the bathtub. He could not move over to the dry side
of the bed. Instead he put a towel on the side where he had sweated and lay
down on it, propped against the headboard with a stiff drink in his hand. He
swallowed a third of it.
He reached for something
to think about, anything. The pharmacy where he bought the Bufferin, then;
perhaps because it was his only experience all day that was not related to
death.
He could remember old
drugstores with soda fountains. As a boy, he thought old drugstores had a
slightly furtive air. When you went in, you always thought about buying rubbers
whether you needed any or not. There were things on the shelves you shouldn't
look at too long.
In the pharmacy where he
bought the Bufferin, the contraceptives with their illustrated wrappings were
in a lucite case on the wall behind the cash register, framed like art.
He preferred the
drugstore and sundry of his childhood. Graham was nearly forty and just
beginning to feel the tug of the way the world was then; it was a sea anchor
streamed behind him in heavy weather.
He thought about Smoot.
Old Smoot had been the soda jerk and manager for the pharmacist who owned the
local drugstore when Graham was a child. Smoot, who drank on the job, forgot to
unroll the awning and the sneakers melted in the window. Smoot forgot to unplug
the coffeepot, and the fire department was summoned. Smoot sold ice cream cones
to children on credit.
His principal outrage was
ordering fifty Kewpie dolls from a detail man while the store owner was on vacation.
On his return, the owner fired Smoot for a week. Then they held a Kewpie doll
sale. Fifty of the Kewpie dolls were arranged in a semicircle in the front
window so that they all stared at whoever was looking in.
They had wide eyes of
cornflower blue. It was a striking display and Graham had looked at it for some
time. He knew they were only Kewpie dolls, but he could feel the focus of their
attention. So many of them looking. A number of people stopped to look at them.
Plaster dolls, all with the same silly spit curl, yet their concentrated gaze
had made his face tingle.
Graham began to relax a
little on the bed. Kewpie dolls staring. He started to take a drink, gasped,
and choked it onto his chest. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and fetched his
box from the dresser drawer. He took out the autopsy protocols of the three
Leeds children and his measured field sketches of the master bedroom and spread
them on the bed.
Here were the three
bloodstains slanting up the corner, and here were the matching stains on the
carpet. Here were the dimensions of the three children. Brother, sister, big
brother. Match. Match. Match.
They had been in a row,
seated along the wall facing the bed. An audience. A dead audience. And Leeds.
Tied around the chest to the headboard. Composed to look as though he were
sitting up in bed. Getting the ligature mark, staining the wall above the
headboard.
What were they watching?
Nothing; they were all dead. But their eyes were open. They were watching a
performance starring the madman and the body of Mrs. Leeds, beside Mr. Leeds
in the bed. An audience. The crazy could look around at their faces.
Graham wondered if he had
lit a candle. The flickering light would simulate expression on their faces. No
candle was found. Maybe he would think to do that next time. . .
This first small bond to
the killer itched and stung like a leech. Graham bit the sheet, thinking.
Why did you move them
again? Why didn't you leave them that way? Graham asked. There's something
you don't want me to know about you. Why, there's something you're ashamed of.
Or is it something you can't afford for me to know?
Did you open their eyes?
Mrs. Leeds was lovely,
wasn't she? You turned on the light after you cut his throat so Mrs. Leeds
could watch him flop, didn't you? It was maddening to have to wear gloves when
you touched her, wasn't it?
There was talcum on her
leg.
Ther was no talcum in the
bathroom.
Someone else seemed to
speak those two facts in a flat voice.
You took off your gloves,
didn't you? The powder came out of a rubber glove as you pulled it oft to touch
her, DIDN'T IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH? You touched her with your
bare hands and then you put the gloves back on and you wiped her down. But
while the gloves were off, DID YOU OPEN THEIR EYES?
Jack Crawford answered
his telephone on the fifth ring. He had answered the telephone in the night
many times and he was not confused.
"Jack, this is
Will."
"Yes, Will."
"Is Price still in
Latent Prints?"
"Yeah. He doesn't go
out much anymore. He's working on the single-print index."
"I think he ought to
come to Atlanta."
"Why? You said
yourself the guy down here is good."
"He is good,
but not as good as Price."
"What do you want
him to do? Where would he look?"
"Mrs. Leeds
fingernails and toenails. They're painted, its a slick surface. And the corneas
of all their eyes. I think he took his gloves off, Jack."
"Jesus, Price'll
have to gun it," Crawford said. "The funeral's this afternoon."
"I think he had to touch her," Graham said
in greeting.
Crawford handed him a
Coke from the machine in Atlanta police headquarters. It was seven-fifty A.M.
"Sure, he moved her
around," Crawford said. "There were grip marks on her wrists and
behind her knees. But every print in the place is from nonporous gloves. Don't
worry, Price is here. Grouchy old bastard. He's on his way to the funeral home
now. The morgue released the bodies last night, but the funeral home's not
doing anything yet. You look bushed. Did you get any sleep?"
"Maybe an hour. I
think he had to touch her with his hands."
"I hope you're
right, but the Atlanta lab swears he wore like surgeon's gloves the whole
time," Crawford said. "The mirror pieces had those smooth prints.
Forefinger on the back of the piece wedged in the labia, smudged thumb on the
front."
"He polished it
after he placed it, so he could see his damn face in there probably,"
Graham said.
"The one in her
mouth was obscured with blood. Same with the eyes. He never took the gloves
off."
"Mrs. Leeds was a
good-looking woman," Graham said. "You've seen the family pictures,
right? I'd want to touch her skin in an intimate situation, wouldn't
you?"
"Intimate?" Distaste sounded in
Crawford's voice before he could stop it. Suddenly he was busy rummaging in his
pockets for change.
"Intimate - they had
privacy. Everybody else was dead. He could have their eyes open or shut,
however he liked."
"Any way he
liked," Crawford said. "They tried her skin for prints, of course.
Nothing. They did get a hand spread off her neck."
"The report didn't
say anything about dusting nails."
"I expect her
fingernails were smudged when they took scrapings. The scrapings were just
where she cut her palms with them. She never scratched him."
"She had pretty
feet," Graham said.
"Umm-hmm. Let's head
upstairs," Crawford said. "The troops are about to muster."
# # #
Jimmy Price had a lot of
equipment - two heavy cases plus his camera bag and tripod. He made a clatter
coming through the front door of the Lombard Funeral Home in Atlanta. He was a
frail old man and his humor had not been improved by a long taxi ride from the
airport in the morning rush.
An officious young fellow
with styled hair hustled him into an office decorated in apricot and cream. The
desk was bare except for a sculpture called The Praying Hands.
Price was examining the
fingertips of the praying hands when Mr. Lombard himself came in. Lombard
checked Price's credentials with extreme care.
"Your Atlanta office
or agency or whatever called me, of course, Mr. Price. But last night we had to
get the police to remove an obnoxious fellow who was trying to take pictures
for The National Tattler, so I'm being very careful. I'm sure you
understand. Mr. Price, the bodies were only released to us about one o'clock
this morning, and the funeral is this afternoon at five. We simply can't delay
it."
"This won't take a
lot of time," Price said. "I need one reasonably intelligent
assistant, if you have one. Have you touched the bodies, Mr. Lombard?"
"No."
"Find out who has.
I'll have to print them all."
#
# #
The morning briefing of
police detectives on the Leeds case was concerned mostly with teeth.
Atlanta Chief of
Detectives R. J. (Buddy) Springfield, a burly man in shirtsleeves, stood by the
door with Dr. Dominic Princi as the twenty-three detectives filed in.
"All right, boys, let's have the big grin as you come by,"
Springfield said. "Show Dr. Princi your teeth. That's right, let's see 'em
all. Christ, Sparks, is that your tongue or are you swallowing a squirrel? Keep
moving."
A large frontal view of a set of teeth, upper and lower, was tacked to
the bulletin board at the front of the squad room. It reminded Graham of the
celluloid strip of printed teeth in a dime-store jack-o'lantern. He and
Crawford sat down at the back of the room while the detectives took their
places at schoolroom desks.
Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner Gilbert Lewis and his
public-relations officer sat apart from them in folding chairs. Lewis had to
face a news conference in an hour.
Chief of Detectives Springfield took charge.
"All right. Let's cease fire with the bullshit. If you read up this
morning, you saw zero progress.
"House-to-house interviews will continue for a radius of four additional
blocks around the scene. R & I has loaned us two clerks to help
cross-matching airline reservations and car rentals in Birmingham and Atlanta.
"Airport and hotel details will make the rounds again today. Yes,
again today. Catch every maid and attendant as well as the desk people.
He had to clean up somewhere and he may have left a mess. If you find somebody
who cleaned up a mess, roust out whoever's in the room, seal it, and get on the
horn to the laundry double quick. This time we've got something for you to show
around. Dr. Princi?"
Dr. Dominic Princi, chief medical examiner for Fulton County, walked to
the front and stood under the drawing of the teeth. He held up a dental cast.
"Gentlemen, this is what the subject's teeth look like. The Smithsonian
in Washington reconstructed them from the impressions we took of bite marks on
Mrs. Leeds and a clear bite mark in a piece of cheese from the Leedses'
reffigerator," Princi said.
"As you can see, he has pegged lateral incisors - the teeth here
and here." Princi pointed to the cast in his hand, then to the chart above
him. "The teeth are crooked in alignment and a corner is missing from this
central incisor. The other incisor is grooved, here. It looks like a 'tailor's
notch,' the land of wear you get biting thread."
"Snaggletoothed son of a bitch," somebody mumbled.
"How do you know for
sure it was the perpetrator that bit the cheese, Doc?" a tall detective in
the front row asked.
Princi disliked being
called "Doc," but he swallowed it. "Saliva washes from the
cheese and ftom the bite wounds matched for blood type," he said.
"The victims' teeth and blood type didn't match."
"Fine, Doctor,"
Springfield said. "We'll pass out pictures of the teeth to show
around."
"What about giving
it to the papers?" The public-relations officer, Simpkins, was speaking.
"A 'have-you-seen-these-teeth' sort of thing."
"I see no objection
to that," Springfield said. "What about it' Commissioner?"
Lewis nodded.
Simpkins was not through.
"Dr. Princi, the press is going to ask why it took four days to get this
dental representation you have here. And why it all had to be done in
Washington."
Special Agent Crawford
studied the button on his ball-point pen. Princi reddened but his voice was
calm. "Bite marks on flesh are distorted when a body is moved, Mr.
Simpson-"
"Simpkins."
"Simpkins, then. We
couldn't make this using only the bite marks on the victims. That is the
importance of the cheese. Cheese is relatively solid, but tricky to cast. You
have to oil it first to keep the moisture out of the casting medium. Usually
you get one shot at it. The Smithsonian has done it for the FBI crime lab
before. They're better equipped to do a face bow registration and they have an
anatomical articulator. They have a consulting forensic odontologist. We
don't. Anything else?"
"Would it be fair to
say that the delay was caused by the FBI lab and not here?"
Princi turned on him.
"What it would be fair to say, Mr. Simpkins, is that a federal
investigator, Special Agent Crawford, found the cheese in the refrigerator two
days ago - after your people had been through the place. He expedited the lab
work at my request. It would be fair to say I'm relieved that it wasn't one of
you that bit the goddamned thing."
Commissioner Lewis broke
in, his heavy voice booming in the squad room. "Nobody's questioning your
judgment, Dr. Princi. Simpkins, the last thing we need is to start a pissing
contest with the FBI. Let's get on with it."
"We're all after the
same thing," Springfield said. "Jack, do you fellows want to add
anything?"
Crawford took the floor.
The faces he saw were not entirely friendly. He had to do something about that.
"I just want to
clear the air, Chief. Years ago there was a lot of rivalry about who got the
collar. Each side, federal and local, held out on the other. It made a gap that
crooks slipped through. That's not Bureau policy now, and it's not my policy. I
don't give a damn who gets the collar. Neither does Investigator Graham. That's
him sitting back there, if some of you are wondering. If the man who did this
is run over by a garbage truck, it would suit me just fine as long as it puts
him off the street. I think you feel the same way.
Crawford looked over the
detectives and hoped they were mollified. He hoped they wouldn't hoard leads.
Commissioner Lewis was talking to him.
"Investigator Graham
has worked on this kind of thing before."
"Yes, sir."
"Can you add
anything, Mr. Graham, suggest anything?"
Crawford raised his
eyebrows at Graham.
"Would you come up
to the front?" Springfield said.
Graham wished he had been
given the chance to talk to Springfield in private. He didn't want to go to the
front. He went, though.
Rumpled and sun-blasted,
Graham didn't look like a federal investigator. Springfield thought he looked
more like a house painter who had put on a suit to appear in court.
The detectives shifted
from one buttock to the other.
When Graham turned to
face the room, the ice-blue eyes were startling in his brown face.
"Just a couple of
things," he said. "We can't assume he's a former mental patient or
somebody with a record of sex offenses. There's a high probability that he
doesn't have any kind of record. If he does, it's more likely to be breaking
and entering than a minor sex offense.
"He may have a
history of biting in lesser assaults - bar fights or child abuse. The biggest
help we'll have on that will come from emergency-room personnel and the
child-welfare people.
"Any bad bite they
can remember is worth checking, regardless of who was bitten or how they said
it happened. That's all I have."
The tall detective on the
front row raised his hand and spoke at the same time.
"But he only bit
women so far, right?"
"That's all we know
about. He bites a lot, though. Six bad ones in Mrs. Leeds, eight in Mrs.
Jacobi. That's way above average.
"What's
average?"
"In a sex murder,
three. He likes to bite."
"Women."
"Most of the time in
sex assaults the bite mark has a livid spot in the center, a suck mark. These
don't. Dr. Princi mentioned it in his autopsy report, and I saw it at the
morgue. No suck marks. For him biting may be a fighting pattern as much as
sexual behavior."
"Pretty thin,"
the detective said.
"It's worth
checking," Graham said. "Any bite is worth checking. People lie about
how it happened. Parents of a bitten child will claim an animal did it and let
the child take rabies shots to cover for a snapper in the family - you've all
seen that. It's worth asking at the hospitals - who's been referred for rabies
shots.
"That's all I
have." Graham's thigh muscles fluttered with fatigue when he sat down.
"It's worth asking,
and we'll ask," Chief of Detectives Springfield said. "Now. The Safe
and Loft Squad works the neighborhood along with Larceny. Work the dog angle.
You'll see the update and the picture in the file. Find out if any stranger was
seen with the dog. Vice and Narcotics, take the K-Y cowboys and the leather
bars after you finish the day tour. Marcus and Whitman - heads up at the funeral.
Do you have relatives, friends of the family, lined up to spot for you? Good.
What about the photographer? All right. Turn in the funeral guest book to R
& I. They've got the one from Birmingham already. The rest of the
assignments are on the sheet. Let's go.
"One other
thing," Commissioner Lewis said. The detectives sank back in their seats.
"I have heard officers in this command referring to the killer as the
'Tooth Fairy.' I don't care what you call him among yourselves, I realize you
have to call him something. But I had better not hear any police officer refer
to him as the Tooth Fairy in public. It sounds flippant. Neither will you use
that name on any internal memoranda.
"That's all."
Crawford and Graham
followed Springfield back to his office. The chief of detectives gave them
coffee while Crawford checked in with the switchboard and jotted down his
messages.
"I didn't get a
chance to talk to you when you got here yesterday,”
Springfield said to
Graham. "This place has been a fucking mad house. It's Will, right? Did
the boys give you everything you need?"
"Yeah, they were fine."
"We don't have shit and we know it," Springfield said.
"Oh, we developed a walking picture from the footprints in the flowerbed.
He was walking around bushes and stuff, so you can't tell much more than his
shoe size, maybe his height. The left print's a little deeper, so he may have
been carrying something. It's busywork. We did get a burglar, though, a couple
of years ago, off a walking picture. Showed Parkinson's disease. Princi picked
it up. No luck this time."
"You have a good crew," Graham said.
"They are. But this kind of thing is out of our usual line, thank
God. Let me get it straight, do you fellows work together all the time - you
and Jack and Dr. Bloom - or do you just get together for one of these?"
"Just for these," Graham said.
"Some reunion. The commissioner was saying you were the one who
nailed Lecter three years ago."
"We were all there with the Maryland police," Graham said.
"The Maryland state troopers arrested him."
Springfield was bluff, not stupid. He could see that Graham was
uncomfortable. He swiveled in his chair and picked up some notes.
"You asked about the dog. Here's the sheet on it. Last night a vet
here called Leeds's brother. He had the dog. Leeds and his oldest boy brought
it in to the vet the afternoon before they were killed. It had a puncture wound
in the abdomen. The vet operated and it's all right. He thought it was shot at
first, but he didn't find a bullet. He thinks it was stabbed with something
like an ice pick or an awl. We're asking the neighbors if they saw anybody
fooling with the dog, and we're working the phones today checking local vets
for other animal mutilations."
"Was the dog wearing a collar with the Leeds name on it?"
"No."
"Did the Jacobis in Birmingham have a dog?" Graham asked.
"We're supposed to be finding that out," Springfield said.
"Hold on, let me see." He dialed an inside number. "Lieutenant
Flatt is our liaison with Birmingham . . . yeah, Flatt. What about the Jacobis'
dog? Uh-huh. . . uh-huh. Just a minute." He put his hand over the phone.
"No dog. They found a litter box in the downstairs bathroom with cat droppings
in it. They didn't find any cat. The neighbors are watching for it."
"Could you ask
Birmingham to check around in the yard and behind any outbuildings,"
Graham said. "If the cat was hurt, the children might not have found it in
time and they might have buried it. You know how cats do. They hide to die.
Dogs come home. And would you ask if it's wearing a collar?"
"Tell them if they
need a methane probe, we'll send one," Crawford said. Save a lot of
digging."
Springfield relayed the
request. The telephone rang as soon as he hung it up. The call was for Jack
Crawford. It was Jimmy Price at the Lombard Funeral Home. Crawford punched on
from the other phone.
"Jack, I got a
partial that's probably a thumb and a fragment of a palm."
"Jimmy, you're the
light of my life."
"I know. The
partial's a tented arch, but it's smudged. I'll have to see what I can do with
it when I get back. Came off the oldest kid's left eye. I never did that
before. Never would have seen it, but it stood out against an eight-ball hemorrhage
from the gunshot wound."
"Can you make an
identification off it?"
"It's a very long
shot, Jack. If he's in the single-print index, maybe, but that's like the Irish
Sweepstakes, you know that. The palm came off the nail of Mrs. Leeds's left big
toe. It's only good for comparison. We'll be lucky to get six points off it.
The assistant SAC witnessed, and so did Lombard. He's a notary. I've got
pictures in situ. Will that do it?"
"What about
elimination prints on the funeral-home employees?"
"I inked up Lombard
and all his Merry Men, major case prints whether they said they had touched her
or not. They're scrubbing their hands and bitching now. Let me go home, Jack. I
want to work these up in my own darkroom. Who knows what's in the water here –
turtles - who knows?
"I can catch a plane
to Washington in an hour and fax the prints down to you by early
afternoon."
Crawford thought a
moment. "Okay, Jimmy, but step on it. Copies to Atlanta and Birmingham
PD's and Bureau offices."
"You got it. Now,
something else we've got to get straight on your end."
Crawford rolled his eyes
to the ceiling. "Gonna piss in my ear about the per diem, aren't
you?"
"Right."
"Today, Jimmy my
lad, nothing's too good for you."
Graham stared out the
window while Crawford told them about the prints.
"That's by God
remarkable," was all Springfield said.
Graham's face was blank;
closed like a lifer's face, Springfield though.
He watched Graham all the
way to the door.
#
# #
The public-safety
commissioner's news conference was breaking up in the foyer as Crawford and
Graham left Springfield's office. The print reporters headed for the phones.
Television reporters were doing "cutaways," standing alone before
their cameras asking the best questions they had heard at the news conference
and extending their microphones to thin air for a reply that would be spliced
in later from film of the commissioner.
Crawford and Graham had
started down the front steps when a small man darted ahead of them, spun and
took a picture. His face popped up behind his camera.
"Will Graham!"
he said. "Remember me - Freddy Lounds? I covered the Lecter case for the Tattler.
I did the paperback."
"I remember,"
Graham said. He and Crawford continued down the steps, Lounds walking sideways
ahead of them.
"When did they call
you in, Will? What have you got?"
"I won't talk to
you, Lounds."
"How does this guy
compare with Lecter? Does he do them-"
"Lounds."
Graham's voice was loud and Crawford got in front of him fast. "Lounds,
you write lying shit, and The National Tattler is an asswipe. Keep away
from me."
Crawford gripped Graham's
arm. "Get away, Lounds. Go on. Will, let's get some breakfast. Come on,
Will." They rounded the corner, walking swiftly.
"I'm sorry,Jack. I
can't stand that bastard. When I was in the hospital, he came in and-"
"I know it,"
Crawford said. "I reamed him out, much good it did." Crawford
remembered the picture in The National Tattler at the end of the
Lecter case. Lounds had come into the hospital room while Graham was asleep. He
flipped back the sheet and shot a picture of Graham's temporary colostomy. The
paper ran it retouched with a black square covering Graham's groin. The caption
said "Crazy Guts Cop."
The diner was bright and
clean. Graham's hands trembled and he slopped coffee in his saucer.
He saw Crawford's
cigarette smoke bothering a couple in the next booth. The couple ate in a
peptic silence, their resentment hanging in the smoke.
Two women, apparently
mother and daughter, argued at a table near the door. They spoke in low voices,
anger ugly in their faces. Graham could feel their anger on his face and neck.
Crawford was griping
about having to testify at a trial in Washington in the morning. He was afraid
the trial could tie him up for several days. As he lit another cigarette, he peered
across the flame at Graham's hands and his color.
"Atlanta and
Birmingham can run the thumbprint against their known sex offenders,"
Crawford said. "So can we. And Price has dug a single print out of the
files before. He'll program the FINDER with it - we've come a long way with
that just since you left."
FINDER, the FBI's
automated fingerprint reader and processor, might recognize the thumbprint on
an incoming fingerprint card from some unrelated case.
"When we get him,
that print and his teeth will put him away,' Crawford said. "What we have
to do, we have to figure on what he could be. We have to swing a wide
loop. Indulge me, now. Say we've arrested a good suspect. You walk in and see
him. What is there about him that doesn't surprise you?"
"I don't know, Jack.
Goddammit, he's got no face for me. We could spend a lot of time looking for
people we've invented. Have you talked to Bloom?"
"On the phone last
night. Bloom doubts he's suicidal, and so does Heimlich. Bloom was only here a
couple of hours the first day, but he and Heimlich have the whole file. Bloom's
examining Ph.D. candidates this week. He said tell you hello. Do you have his
number in Chicago?"
"I have it."
Graham liked Dr. Alan
Bloom, a small round man with sad eyes, a good forensic psychiatrist - maybe
the best. Graham appreciated the fact that Dr. Bloom had never displayed
professional interest in him. That was not always the case with psychiatrists.
"Bloom says he
wouldn't be surprised if we heard from the Tooth Fairy. He might write us a
note," Crawford said.
"On a bedroom
wall."
"Bloom thinks he
might be disfigured or he may believe he's disfigured. He told me not to give
that a lot of weight. 'I won't set up a straw man to chase, Jack,' is what he
told me. 'That would be a distraction and would diffuse the effort.' Said they
taught him to talk like that in graduate school."
"He's right"
Graham said.
"You could tell
something about him or you wouldn't have found that fingerprint," Crawford
said.
"That was the
evidence on the damn wall, Jack. Don't put this on me. Look, don't expect too
much from me, all right?"
"Oh, we'll get him.
You know we'll get him, don't you?"
"I know it. One way
or the other."
"What's one
way?"
"We'll find evidence
we've overlooked."
"What's the
other?"
"He'll do it and do
it until one night he makes too much noise going in and the husband gets to a
gun in time."
"No other
possibilities?"
"You think I'm going
to spot him across a crowded room? No, that's Ezio Pinza you're thinking about,
does that. The Tooth Fairy will go on and on until we get smart or get lucky.
He won't stop."
"Why?"
"Because he's got a
genuine taste for it."
"See, you do know
something about him," Crawford said.
Graham did not speak
again until they were on the sidewalk. "Wait until the next full
moon," he told Crawford. "Then tell me how much I know about
him."
Graham went back to his
hotel and slept for two and a half hours. He woke at noon, showered, and
ordered a pot of coffee and a sandwich. It was time to make a close study of
the Jacobi file from Birmingham. He scrubbed his reading glasses with hotel
soap and settled in by the window with the file. For the first few minutes he
looked up at every sound, footsteps in the hall, the distant thud of the
elevator door. Then he knew nothing but the file.
The waiter with the tray knocked and waited, knocked and
waited. Finally he left the lunch on the floor outside the door and signed the
bill himself.
Hoyt Lewis, meter reader for Georgia Power Company, parked
his truck under a big tree in the alley and settled back with his lunch box. It
was no fun opening his lunch now that he packed it himself. No little notes in
there anymore, no Surprise Twinkie.
He was halfway through
his sandwich when a loud voice at his ear made him jump.
"I guess I used a
thousand dollars' worth of electricity this month, is that right?"
Lewis turned and saw at
the truck window the red face of H. G. Parsons. Parsons wore Bermuda shorts and
carried a yard broom.
"I didn't understand
what you said."
"I guess you'll say
I used a thousand dollars' worth of electricity this month. Did you hear me
that time?"
"I don't know what
you've used because I haven't read your meter yet, Mr. Parsons. When I do read
it, I'll put it down on this piece of paper right here."
Parsons was bitter about
the size of the bill. He had complained to the power company that he was being
prorated.
"I'm keeping up with
what I use," Parsons said. "I'm going to the Public Service
Commission with it, too."
"You want to read
your meter with me? Let's go over there right now and-"
"I know how to read
a meter. I guess you could read one too if it wasn't so much trouble."
"Just be quiet a
minute, Parsons." Lewis got out of his truck. "Just be quiet a minute
now, dammit. Last year you put a magnet on your meter. Your wife said you was
in the hospital, so I just took it off and didn't say anything. When you poured
molasses in it last winter, I reported it. I notice you paid up when we charged
you for it.
"Your bill went up
after you did all that wiring yourself. I've told you until I'm blue in the
face: something in that house is draining off current. Do you hire an
electrician to find it? No, you call down to the office and bitch about me.
I've about got a bait of you." Lewis was pale with anger.
"I'll get to the
bottom of this," Parsons said, retreating down the alley toward his yard.
"They're checking up on you, Mr. Lewis. I saw somebody reading your route
ahead of you," he said across the fence. "Pretty soon you'll have to
go to work like everybody else."
Lewis cranked his truck
and drove on down the alley. Now he would have to find another place to finish
his lunch. He was sorry. The big shade tree had been a good lunch place for
years.
It was directly behind
Charles Leeds's house.
# # #
At five-thirty P.M. Hoyt
Lewis drove in his own automobile to the Cloud Nine Lounge, where he had
several boilermakers to ease his mind.
When he called his
estranged wife, all he could think of to say was "I wish you was still fixing
my lunch."
"You ought to have
thought about that, Mr. Smarty," she said, and hung up.
He played a gloomy game
of shuffleboard with some linemen and a dispatcher from Georgia Power and
looked over the crowd. Goddamned airline clerks had started coming in the
Cloud Nine. All had the same little mustache and pinkie ring. Pretty soon
they'd be fixing the Cloud Nine English with a damned dart board. You can't depend
on nothing.
"Hey, Hoyt. I'll
match you for a bottle of beer." It was his supervisor, Billy Meeks.
"Say, Billy, I need
to talk to you."
"What's up?"
"You know that old
son of a bitch Parsons that's all the time calling up?"
"Called me last
week, as a matter of fact," Meeks said. "What about him?"
"He said somebody
was reading my route ahead of me, like maybe somebody thought I wasn't making
the rounds. You don't think I'm reading meters at home, do you?"
"Nope."
"You
don't think that, do you? I mean, if I'm on a man's shit list I want him to
come right out and say it."
"If
you was on my shit list, you think I'd be scared to say so to your face?"
"No."
"All
right, then. If anybody was checking your route, I'd know it. Your executives
is always aware of a situation like that. Nobody's checking up on you, Hoyt.
You can't pay any attention to Parsons, he's just old and contrary. He called
me up last week and said, 'Congratulations on getting wise to that Hoyt
Lewis.' I didn't pay him any mind."
"I
wish we'd put the law on him about that meter," Lewis said. "I was
just setting back there in the alley under a tree trying to eat my lunch today
and he jumped me. What he needs is a good ass-kicking."
"I
used to set back there myself when I had the route," Meeks said.
"Boy, I tell you one time I seen Mrs. Leeds - well, it don't seem right to
talk about it now she's dead - but one or two times she was out there sunning
herself in the backyard in her swimming suit. Whooee. Had a cute little peter
belly. That was a damn shame about them. She was a nice lady."
"Did
they catch anybody yet?"
"Naw."
"Too
bad he got the Leedses when old Parsons was right down the street
convenient," Lewis observed.
"I'll tell you what,
I don't let my old lady lay around out in the yard in no swimming suit. She
goes 'Silly Billy, who's gonna see me?' I told her, I said you can't tell what
kind of a insane bastard might jump over that hedge with his private out. Did
the cops talk to you? Ask you had you seen anybody?"
"Yeah, I think they
got everybody that has a route out there. Mailmen, everybody. I was working
Laurelwood on the other side of Betty Jane Drive the whole week until today,
though." Lewis picked at the label on his beer. "You say Parsons
called you up last week?"
"Yep."
"Then he must have
saw somebody reading his meter. He wouldn't have called in if he'd just made it
up today to bother me. You say you didn't send nobody, and it sure wasn't me he
saw."
"Might have been
Southeastern Bell checking something."
"Might have
been."
"We don't share
poles out there, though."
"Reckon I ought to
call the cops?"
"Wouldn't hurt
nothing," Meeks said.
"Naw, it might do
Parsons some good, talk with the law. Scare the shit out of him when they drive
up, anyhow."
Graham went back to the Leeds house in the late afternoon.
He entered through the front door and tried not to look at the ruin the killer
had left. So far he had seen files, a killing floor and meat - all aftermath.
He knew a fair amount about how they died. How they lived was on his mind
today.
A survey, then. The
garage contained a good ski boat, well used and well maintained, and a station
wagon. Golf clubs were there, and a trail bike. The power tools were almost
unused. Adult toys.
Graham took a wedge from
the golf bag and had to choke up on the long shaft as he made a jerky swing.
The bag puffed a smell of leather at him as he leaned it back against the wall.
Charles Leeds's things.
Graham pursued Charles
Leeds through the house. His hunting prints hung in the den. His set of the
Great Books were all in a row. Sewanee annuals. H. Allen Smith and Perelman and
Max Shulman on the bookshelves. Vonnegut and Evelyn Waugh. C. S. Forrester's Beat
to Quarters was open on a table.
In the den closet a good
skeet gun, a Nikon camera, a Bolex Super Eight movie camera and projector.
Graham, who owned almost
nothing except basic fishing equipment, a third-hand Volkswagen, and two cases
of Montrachet, felt a mild animosity toward the adult toys and wondered why.
Who was Leeds? A
successful tax attorney, a Sewanee footballer, a rangy man who liked to laugh,
a man who got up and fought with his throat cut.
Graham followed him
through the house out of an odd sense of obligation. Learning about him first
was a way of asking permission to look at his wife.
Graham felt that it was
she who drew the monster, as surely as a singing cricket attracts death from
the red-eyed fly.
Mrs. Leeds, then.
She had a small dressing
room upstairs. Graham managed to reach it without looking around the bedroom.
The room was yellow and appeared undisturbed except for the smashed mirror
above the dressing table. A pair of L. L. Bean moccasins was on the floor in
front of the closet, as though she had just stepped out of them. Her dressing
gown appeared to have been flung on its peg, and the closet revealed the mild
disorder of a woman who has many other closets to organize.
Mrs. Leeds's diary was in
a plum velvet box on the dressing table. The key was taped to the lid along
with a check tag from the police property room.
Graham sat on a spindly
white chair and opened the diary at random:
December 23rd, Tuesday,
Mama's house. The children are still asleep. When Mama glassed in the sun
porch, I hated the way it changed the looks of the house, but it's very
pleasant and I can sit here warm looking out at the snow. How many more
Christmases can she manage a houseful of grandchildren? A lot, I hope.
A hard drive yesterday up from Atlanta,
snowing after Raleigh. We had to creep. I was tired anyway from getting
everyone ready. Outside Chapel Hill, Charlie stopped the car and got out. He
snapped some icicles off a branch to make me a martini. He came back to the
car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on
his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking
with a little pain and spilling warm.
I hope the parka fits him. If he got me
that tacky dinner ring, I'll die. I could kick Madelyn's big cellulite behind
for showing hers and carrying on. Four ridiculously big diamonds the color of
dirty ice. Icicle ice is so clear. The sun came through the car window and
where the icicle was broken off it stuck up out of the glass and made a little
prism. It made a spot of red and green on my hand holding the glass. I could
feel the colors on my hand.
He asked me what I want for Christmas and I
cupped my hands around his ear and whispered: Your big prick, silly, in as far
as it will go.
The bald spot on the back of his head
turned red. He's ahvays afraid the children will hear. Men have no confidence
in whispers.
The page was flecked with
detective's cigar ash.
Graham read on as the
light faded, through the daughter's tonsillectomy, and a scare in June when
Mrs. Leeds found a small lump in her breast. (Dear God, the children are so
small.)
Three pages later the
lump was a small benign cyst, easily removed.
Dr.
Janovich turned me loose this afternoon. We left the hospital and drove to the
pond. We hadn't been there in a long while. There never seems to be enough
time. Charlie had two bottles of champagre on ice and we drank them and fed
the ducks while the sun went down. He stood at edge of the water with his back
to me for a while and I think he cried a little.
Susan
said she was afraid we were coming home from the hospital with another brother
for her. Home!
Graham heard the
telephone ring in the bedroom. A click and the hum of an answering machine.
"Hello, this is Valerie Leeds. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right
now, but if you'll leave your name and number after the tone, we'll get back to
you. Thank you."
Graham half-expected to
hear Crawford's voice after the beep, but there was only the dial tone. The
caller had hung up.
He had heard her voice;
now he wanted to see her. He went down to the den.
# # #
He had in his pocket a
reel of Super Eight movie film belonging to Charles Leeds. Three weeks before
his death, Leeds had left the film with a druggist who sent it away for
processing. He never picked it up. Police found the receipt in Leeds's wallet
and got the film from the druggist. Detectives viewed the home movie along with
family snapshots developed at the same time and found nothing of interest.
Graham wanted to see the
Leedses alive. At the police station, the detectives had offered Graham their
projector. He wanted to watch the movie at the house. Reluctantly they let him
check it out of the property room.
Graham found the screen
and projector in the den closet, set them up, and sat down in Charles Leeds's
big leather armchair to watch. He felt something tacky on the chair arm under
his palm - a child's sticky fingerprints fuzzed with lint. Graham's hand
smelled like candy.
It was a pleasant little
silent home movie, more imaginative than most. It opened with a dog, a gray
Scotty, asleep on the den rug. The dog was disturbed momentarily by the
moviemaking and raised his head to look at the camera. Then he went to sleep
again. A jumpy cut to the dog still asleep. Then the Scotty's ears perked up.
He rose and barked, and the camera followed him into the kitchen as he ran to
the door and stood expectantly, shivering and wagging his stumpy tail.
Graham bit his lower lip
and waited too. On the screen, the door opened and Mrs. Leeds came in carrying
groceries. She blinked and laughed in surprise and touched her tousled hair
with her free hand. Her lips moved as she walked out of the picture, and the
children came in behind her carrying smaller sacks. The girl was six, the boys
eight and ten.
The younger boy,
apparently a veteran of home movies, pointed to his ears and wiggled them. The
camera was positioned fairly high. Leeds was seventy-five inches tall,
according to the coroner's report.
Graham believed that this
part of the movie must have been made in the early spring. The children wore
windbreakers and Mrs. Leeds appeared pale. At the morgue she had a good tan and
bathing-suit marks.
Brief scenes followed of
the boys playing Ping-Pong in the basement and the girl, Susan, wrapping a
present in her room, tongue curled over her upper lip in concentration and a
wisp of hair down over her forehead. She brushed her hair back with her plump
hand, as her mother had done in the kitchen.
A subsequent scene showed
Susan in a bubble bath, crouched like a small frog. She wore a large shower
cap. The camera angle was lower and the focus uncertain, clearly the work of a
brother. The scene ended with her shouting soundlessly at the camera and covering
her six-year-old chest as her shower cap slipped down over her eyes.
Not to be outdone, Leeds
had surprised Mrs. Leeds in the shower. The shower curtain bumped and bulged as
the curtain does before a grade-school theatrical. Mrs. Leeds's arm appeared
around the curtain. In her hand was a large bath sponge. The scene closed with
the lens obscured in soapsuds.
The
film ended with a shot of Norman Vincent Peale speaking on television and a pan
to Charles Leeds snoring in the chair where Graham now sat.
Graham
stared at the blank square of light on the screen. He liked the Leedses. He was
sorry that he had been to the morgue. He thought the madman who visited them
might have liked them too. But the madman would like them better the way they
were now.
# # #
Graham's
head felt stuffed and stupid. He swam in the pool at his hotel until he was
rubber-legged, and came out of the water thinking of two things at once - a
Tanqueray martini and the taste of Molly's mouth.
He
made the martini himself in a plastic glass and telephoned Molly.
"Hello,
hotshot."
"Hey, baby! Where
are you?"
"In
this damned hotel in Atlanta."
"Doing
some good?"
"None
you'd notice. I'm lonesome."
"Me
too."
"Horny."
"Me
too."
"Tell
me about yourself."
"Well,
I had a run-in with Mrs. Holper today. She wanted to return a dress with a
huge big whiskey stain on the seat. I mean, obviously she had worn it to the
Jaycee thing."
"And
what did you say?"
"I
told her I didn't sell it to her like that."
"And
what did she say?"
"She
said she never had any trouble returning dresses before, which was one reason
she shopped at my place rather than some others that she knew about."
"And
then what did you say?"
"Oh,
I said I was upset because Will talks like a jackass on the phone."
"I see."
"Willy's
fine. He's covering some turtle eggs the dogs dug up. Tell me what you're
doing."
"Reading
reports. Eating junk food."
"Thinking
a good bit, I expect."
"Yep."
"Can
I help you?"
"I
just don't have a lock on anything, Molly. There's not enough information.
Well, there's a lot of information, but I haven't done enough with it."
"Will
you be in Atlanta for a while? I'm not bugging you about coming home, I just
wonder."
"I
don't know. I'll be here a few more days at least. I miss you."
"Want
to talk about fucking?"
"I don't think I
could stand it. I think maybe we better not do that."
"Do what?"
"Talk about
fucking."
"Okay. You don't
mind if I think about it, though?"
"Absolutely
not."
"We've got a new
dog."
"Oh hell."
"Looks like a cross
between a basset hound and a Pekingese."
"Lovely."
"He's got big
balls."
"Never mind about
his balls."
"They almost drag
the ground. He has to retract them when he runs.
"He can't do
that."
"Yes he can. You don't
know."
"Yes I do
know."
"Can you retract
yours?"
"I thought we were
coming to that."
"Well?"
"If you must know, I
retracted them once."
"When was
that?"
"In
my youth. I had to clear a barbed-wire fence in a hurry."
"Why?"
"I was carrying this
watermelon that I had not cultivated."
"You were fleeing?
From whom?"
"A swineherd of my
acquaintance. Alerted by his dogs, he burst from his dwelling in his BVD's,
waving a fowling piece. Fortunately, he tripped over a butterbean trellis and
gave me a running start."
"Did he shoot at you?"
"I thought so at the
time, yes. But the reports I heard might have issued from my behind. I've never
been entirely clear on that."
"Did you clear the
fence?"
"Handily."
"A criminal mind,
even at that age."
"I don't have a
criminal mind."
"Of course you
don't. I'm thinking about painting the kitchen. What color do you like? Will?
What color do you like? Are you there?"
"Yeah, uh, yellow.
Let's paint it yellow."
"Yellow is a bad
color for me. I'll look green at breakfast."
"Blue, then."
"Blue is cold."
"Well goddammit,
paint it baby-shit tan for all I care. . . . No, look, I'll probably be home
before long and we'll go to the paint store and get some chips and stuff, okay?
And maybe some new handles and that."
"Let's do, let's get
some handles. I don't know why I'm talking about this stuff. Look, I love you
and I miss you and you're doing the right thing. It's costing you too, I know
that. I'm here and I'll be here whenever you come home, or I'll meet you
anywhere, anytime. That's what."
"Dear Molly. Dear
Molly. Go to bed now."
"All right."
"Good night."
Graham lay with his hands
behind his head and conjured dinners with Molly. Stone crab and Sancerre, the
salt breeze mixed with the wine.
But it was his curse to
pick at conversations, and he began to do it now. He had snapped at her after a
harmless remark about his "criminal mind." Stupid.
Graham found Molly's
interest in him largely inexplicable.
He
called police headquarters and left word for Springfield that he wanted to
start helping with the legwork in the morning. There was nothing else to do.
The
gin helped him sleep.
Flimsy copies of the notes on all calls about the Leeds case
were placed on Buddy Springfield's desk. Tuesday morning at seven o'clock when
Springfield arrived at his office, there were sixty-three of them. The top one
was red-flagged.
It said Birmingham police
had found a cat buried in a shoebox behind the Jacobis' garage. The cat had a
flower between its paws and was wrapped in a dish towel. The cat's name was
written on the lid in a childish hand. It wore no collar. A string tied in a
granny knot held the lid on.
The Birmingham medical
examiner said the cat was strangled. He had shaved it and found no puncture
wound.
Springfield tapped the
earpiece of his glasses against his teeth.
They had found soft
ground and dug it up with a shovel. Didn't need any damned methane probe.
Still, Graham had been right.
The chief of detectives
licked his thumb and started through the rest of the stack of flimsies. Most
were reports of suspicious vehicles in the neighborhood during the past week,
vague descriptions giving only vehicle type or color. Four anonymous telephone
callers had told Atlanta residents: "I'm gonna do you like the Leedses."
Hoyt Lewis' report was in
the middle of the pile.
Springfield called the
overnight watch commander."What about the meter reader's report on this
Parsons? Number forty-eight."
"We tried to check
with the utilities last night, Chief, to see if they had anybody in that
alley," the watch commander said. "'They'll have to get back to us
this morning."
"You have somebody
get back to them now," Springfield said. "Check sanitation,
the city engineer, check for construction permits along the alley and catch me
in my car."
He dialed Will Graham's
number. "Will? Meet me in front of your hotel in ten minutes and let's
take a little ride."
At 7:45 A.M. Springfield
parked near the end of the alley. He and Graham walked abreast in wheel tracks
pressed in the gravel. Even this early the sun was hot.
"You need to get you
a hat," Springfield said. His own snappy straw was tilted down over his
eyes.
The chain-link fence at
the rear of the Leeds property was covered with vines. They paused by the light
meter on the pole.
"If he came down
this way, he could see the whole back end of the house," Springfield said.
In only five days the
Leeds property had begun to look neglected. The lawn was uneven, and wild
onions sprouted above the grass. Small branches had fallen in the yard. Graham
wanted to pick them up. The house seemed asleep, the latticed porch striped and
dappled with the long morning shadows of the trees. Standing with Springfield
in the alley, Graham could see himself looking in the back window, opening the
porch door. Oddly, his reconstruction of the entry by the killer seemed to
elude him now, in the sunlight. He watched a child's swing move gently in the
breeze.
"That looks like
Parsons," Springfield said.
H. G. Parsons was out
early, grubbing in a flowerbed in his back-yard, two houses down. Springfield
and Graham went to Parsons' back gate and stood beside his garbage cans. The
lids were chained to the fence.
Springfield measured the
height of the light meter with a tape.
He had notes on all the
Leedses' neighbors. His notes said Parsons had taken early retirement from the
post office at his supervisor's request. The supervisor had reported Parsons to
be "increasingly absentminded."
Springfield's notes
contained gossip, too. The neighbors said Parsons' wife stayed with her sister
in Macon as much as she could, and that his son never called him anymore.
"Mr. Parsons. Mr.
Parsons," Springfield called.
Parsons leaned his
tilling fork against the house and came to the fence. He wore sandals and white
socks. Dirt and grass had stained the toes of his socks. His face was shiny
pink.
Arteriosclerosis, Graham
thought. He's taken his pill.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Parsons, could
we talk to you for a minute? We were hoping you could help us,"
Springfield said.
"Are you from the
power company?"
"No, I'm Buddy
Springfield from the police department."
"It's about the
murder, then. My wife and I were in Macon, as I told the officer-"
"I know, Mr.
Parsons. We wanted to ask about your light meter. Did-"
"If that . . . -
meter reader said I did anything improper, he's just-"
"No, no. Mr.
Parsons, did you see a stranger reading your meter last week?"
"No."
"Are you sure? I
believe you told Hoyt Lewis that someone else read your meter ahead of
him."
"I did. And it's
about time. I'm keeping up with this, and the Public Service Commission will
get a full report from me."
"Yes, sir. I'm sure
they'll take care of it. Who did you see reading your meter?"
"It wasn't a
stranger, it was somebody from Georgia Power."
"How do you
know?"
"Well, he looked like
a meter reader."
"What was he
wearing?"
"What they all wear,
I guess. What is it? A brown outfit and the cap."
"Did you see his
face?"
"I can't remember if
I did. I was looking out the kitchen window when I saw him. I wanted to talk to
him, but I had to put on my robe, and by the time I got outside, he was
gone."
"Did he have a
truck?"
"I don't remember
seeing one. What's going on? Why do you want to know?"
"We're checking
everybody who was in this neighborhood last week. It's really important, Mr.
Parsons. Try hard to remember."
"So it is about the
murder. You haven't arrested anybody yet, have you?"
"No."
"I watched the
street last night, and fifteen minutes went by without a single squad
car passing. It was horrible, what happened to the Leedses. My wife has been
beside herself. I wonder who'll buy their house. I saw some Negroes looking at
it the other day. You know, I had to speak to Leeds a few times about his
children, but they were all right. Of course, he wouldn't do anything I
suggested about his lawn. The Department of Agriculture has some excellent pamphlets
on the control of nuisance grasses. Finally I just put them in his mailbox.
Honestly, when he mowed the wild onions were suffocating."
"Mr. Parsons,
exactly when did you see this fellow in the alley?" Springfield asked.
"I'm not sure, I was
trying to think."
"Do you recall the
time of day? Morning? Noon? Afternoon?"
"I know the times of
day, you don't have to name them. Afternoon, maybe. I don't remember."
Springfield rubbed the
back of his neck. "Excuse me, Mr. Parsons, but I have to get this just
right. Could we go in your kitchen and you show us just where you saw him
from?"
"Let me see your
credentials. Both of you."
In the house, silence,
shiny surfaces, and dead air. Neat. Neat. The desperate order of an aging
couple who see their lives begin to blur.
Graham wished he had
stayed outside. He was sure the drawers held polished silver with egg between
the tines.
Stop it and let's pump
the old fart.
The window over the
kitchen sink gave a good view of the backyard.
"There. Are you
satisfied?" Parsons asked. "You can see out there from here. I
never talked to him, I don't remember what he looked like. If that's all, I
have a lot to do."
Graham spoke for the
first time. "You said you went to get your robe, and when you came back he
was gone. You weren't dressed, then?"
"No."
"In the middle of
the afternoon? Were you not feeling well, Mr. Parsons?"
"What I do in my own
house is my business. I can wear a kangaroo suit in here if I want to. Why aren't
you out looking for the killer? Probably because it's cool in here."
"I understand you're
retired, Mr. Parsons, so I guess it doesn't matter if you put on your clothes
every day or not. A lot of days you just don't get dressed at all, am I
right?"
Veins stood out in Parsons'
temples. "Just because I'm retired doesn't mean I don't put my clothes on
and get busy every day. I just got hot and I came in and took a shower. I was
working. I was mulching, and I had done a day's work by afternoon, which is more
than you'll do today."
"You were what?"
"Mulching."
"What day did you
mulch?"
"Friday. It was last Friday.
They delivered it in the morning, a big load, and I had . . .I had it all
spread by afternoon. You can ask at the Garden Center how much it was.
"And you got hot and came in
and took a shower. What were you doing in the kitchen?"
"Fixing a glass of iced
tea."
"And you got out some ice?
But the refrigerator is over there, away from the window."
Parsons looked from the window to
the refrigerator, lost and confused. His eyes were dull, like the eyes of a
fish in the market toward the end of the day. Then they brightened in triumph.
He went to the cabinet by the sink.
"I was right here, getting
some Sweet 'N Low when I saw him. That's it. That's all. Now, if you're through
prying . . ."
"I think he saw Hoyt
Lewis," Graham said.
"So do I," Springfield
said.
"It was not
Hoyt Lewis. It was not." Parsons'
eyes were watering.
"How do you know?"
Springfield said. "It might have been Hoyt Lewis, and you just thought-"
"Lewis is brown from the sun.
He's got old greasy hair and those peckerwood sideburns." Parsons' voice
had risen and he was talking so fast it was hard to understand him.
"That's how I knew. Of course it wasn't Lewis. This fellow was paler and
his hair was blond. He turned to write on his clipboard and I could see under
the back of his hat. Blond. Cut off square on the back of his neck."
Springfield stood absolutely still
and when he spoke his voice was still skeptical. "What about his
face?"
"I don't know. He may have
had a mustache."
"Like Lewis?"
"Lewis doesn't have a
mustache."
"Oh," Springfield said.
"Was he at eye level with the meter? Did he have to look up at it?"
"Eye level, I guess."
"Would
you know him if you saw him again?"
"No."
"What
age was he?"
"Not
old. I don't know."
"Did
you see the Leedses' dog anywhere around him?"
"No."
"Look, Mr. Parsons, I can see
I was wrong," Springfield said. "You're a real big help to us. If you
don't mind, I'm going to send our artist out here, and if you'd just let him
sit right here at your kitchen table, maybe you could give him an idea of what
this fellow looked like. It sure wasn't Lewis."
"I don't want my name in any
newspapers.
"It won't be."
Parsons followed them outside.
"You've done a hell of a fine
job on this yard, Mr. Parsons," Springfield said. "It ought to win
some kind of a prize."
Parsons said nothing. His face was
red and working, his eyes wet. He stood there in his baggy shorts and sandals
and glared at them. As they left the yard, he grabbed his fork and began to
grub furiously in the ground, hacking blindly through the flowers, scattering
mulch on the grass.
#
# #
Springfield checked in on his car
radio. None of the utilities or city agencies could account for the man in the
alley on the day before the murders. Springfield reported Parsons' description
and gave instructions for the artist. "Tell him to draw the pole and the
meter first and go from there. He'll have to ease the witness along.
"Our artist doesn't much like
to make house calls," the chief of detectives told Graham as he slid the
stripline Ford through the traffic. "He likes for the secretaries to see
him work, with the witness standing on one foot and then the other, looking
over his shoulder. A police station is a damn poor place to question anybody
that you don't need to scare. Soon as we get the picture, we'll door-to-door
the neighborhood with it.
"I feel like we just got a
whiff, Will. Just faint, but a whiff, don't you? Look, we did it to the poor
old devil and he came through. Now let's do something with it."
"If the man in the alley is
the one we want, it's the best news yet," Graham said. He was sick of
himself.
"Right. It means he's not
just getting off a bus and going whichever way his peter points. He's got a
plan. He stayed in town overnight. He knows where he's going a day or two
ahead. He's got some kind of an idea. Case the place, kill the pet, then the
family. What the hell kind of an idea is that?" Springfield paused.
"That's kind of your territory, isn't it?"
"It is, yes. If it's
anybody's, I suppose it's mine."
"I know you've seen this kind
of thing before. You didn't like it the other day when I asked you about
Lecter, but I need to talk to you about it."
"All right."
"He killed nine people,
didn't he, in all?"
"Nine that we know of. Two
others didn't die."
"What happened to them?"
"One is on a respirator at a
hospital in Baltimore. The other is in a private mental hospital in
Denver."
"What made him do it, how was
he crazy?"
Graham looked out the car window
at the people on the sidewalk. His voice sounded detached, as though he were
dictating a letter.
"He did it because he liked
it. Still does. Dr. Lecter is not crazy, in any common way we think of being
crazy. He did some hideous things because he enjoyed them. But he can function
perfecfly when he wants to."
"What did the psychologists
call it - what was wrong with him?"
"They say he's a sociopath,
because they don't know what else to call him. He has some of the
characteristics of what they call a sociopath. He has no remorse or guilt at
all. And he had the first and worst sign - sadism to animals as a child."
Springfield grunted.
"But he doesn't have any of
the other marks," Graham said. "He wasn't a drifter, he had no
history of trouble with the law. He wasn't shallow and exploitive in small
things, like most sociopaths are. He's not insensitive. They don't know what to
call him. His electroencephalograms show some odd patterns, but they haven't
been able to tell much from them."
"What would you call
him?" Springfield asked.
Graham hesitated.
"Just to yourself, what do
you call him?"
"He's a monster. I think of
him as one of those pitiful things that are born in hospitals from time to
time. They feed it, and keep it warm, but they don't put it on the machines and
it dies. Lecter is the same way in his head, but he looks normal and nobody
could tell."
"A couple of friends of mine
in the chiefs' association are from Baltimore. I asked them how you spotted
Lecter. They said they didn't know. How did you do it? What was the first
indication, the first thing you felt?"
"It was a coincidence,"
Graham said. "The sixth victim was killed in his workshop. He had
woodworking equipment and he kept his hunting stuff out there. He was laced to
a pegboard where the tools hung, and he was really torn up, cut and stabbed,
and he had arrows in him. The wounds reminded me of something. I couldn't think
what it was."
"And you had to go on to the
next ones."
"Yes. Lecter was very hot -
he did the next three in nine days. But this sixth one, he had two old scars on
his thigh. The pathologist checked with the local hospital and found he had
fallen out of a tree blind five years before while he was bow hunting and stuck
an arrow through his leg.
"The doctor of record was a
resident surgeon, but Lecter had treated him first - he was on duty in the
emergency room. His name was on the admissions log. It had been a long time
since the accident, but I thought Lecter might remember if anything had seemed
fishy about the arrow wound, so I went to his office to see him. We were
grabbing at anything then.
"He was practicing psychiatry
by that time. He had a nice office. Antiques. He said he didn't remember much
about the arrow wound, that one of the victim's hunting buddies had brought him
in, and that was it.
"Something bothered me,
though. I thought it was something Lecter said, or something in the office.
Crawford and I hashed it over. We checked the files, and Lecter had no record.
I wanted some time in his office by myself, but we couldn't get a warrant. We
had nothing to show. So I went back to see him.
"It was Sunday, he saw
patients on Sunday. The building was empty except for a couple of people in his
waiting room. He saw me right away. We were talking and he was making this polite
effort to help me and I looked up at some very old medical books on the shelf
above his head. And I knew it was him.
"When
I looked at him again, maybe my face changed, I don't know. I knew it and he
knew I knew it. I still couldn't think of the reason, though. I didn't
trust it. I had to figure it out. So I mumbled something and got out of there,
into the hall. There was a pay phone in the hall. I didn't want to stir him up
until I had some help. I was talking to the police switchboard when he came out
a service door behind me in his socks. I never heard him coming. I felt his
breath was all, and then . . . there was the rest of it."
"How
did you know, though?"
"I
think it was maybe a week later in the hospital I finally figured it out. It
was Wound Man - an illustration they used in a lot of the early
medical books like the ones Lecter had. It shows different kinds of battle
injuries, all in one figure. I had seen it in a survey course a pathologist was
teaching at GWU. The sixth victim's position and his injuries were a close
match to Wound Man."
"Wound
Man, you say? That's all you had?"
"Well,
yeah. It was a coincidence that I had seen it. A piece of luck."
"That's
some luck."
"If
you don't believe me, what the fuck did you ask me for?"
"I
didn't hear that."
"Good.
I didn't mean to say it. That's the way it happened, though."
"Okay,"
Springfield said. "Okay. Thank you for telling me. I need to know things
like that."
#
# #
Parsons'
description of the man in the alley and the information on the cat and the dog
were possible indications of the killer's methods: it seemed likely that he
scouted as a meter reader and felt compelled to hurt the victims' pets before
he came to kill the family.
The
immediate problem the police faced was whether or not to publicize their
theory.
With
the public aware of the danger signals and watching, police might get advance
warning of the killer's next attack - but the killer probably followed the news
too.
He
might change his habits.
There
was strong feeling in the police department that the slender leads should be
kept secret except for a special bulletin to veterinarians and animal shelters
throughout the Southeast asking for immediate reports on pet mutilations.
That
meant not giving the public the best possible warning. It was a moral question,
and the police were not comfortable with it.
They
consulted Dr. Alan Bloom in Chicago. Dr. Bloom said that if the killer read a
warning in the newspapers, he would probably change his method of casing a
house. Dr. Bloom doubted that the man could stop attacking the pets, regardless
of the risk. The psychiatrist told the police that they should by no means
assume they had twenty-five days to work - the period before the next full moon
on August 25.
On
the morning of July 31, three hours after Parsons
gave his description, a decision was reached in a telephone conference among
Birmingham and Atlanta police and Crawford in Washington: they would send the
private bulletin to veterinarians, canvass for three days in the neighborhood with
the artist's sketch, then release the information to the news media.
For
those three days Graham and the Atlanta detectives pounded the sidewalks
showing the sketch to householders in the area of the Leeds home. There was
only a suggestion of a face in the sketch, but they hoped to find someone who
could improve it.
Graham's
copy of the sketch grew soft around the edges from the sweat of his hands.
Often it was difficult to get residents to answer the door. At night he lay in
his room with powder on his heat rash, his mind circling the problem as though
it were a hologram. He courted the feeling that precedes an idea. It would not
come.
Meanwhile,
there were four accidental injuries and one fatality in Atlanta as householders
shot at relatives coming home late. Prowler calls multiplied and useless tips
stacked up in the In baskets at police headquarters. Despair went around like
the flu.
Crawford
returned from Washington at the end of the third day and dropped in on Graham
as he sat peeling off his wet socks.
"Hot
work?"
"Grab
a sketch in the morning and see," Graham said.
"No,
it'll all be on the news tonight. Did you walk all day?"
"I
can't drive through their yards."
"I
didn't think anything would come of this canvass," Crawford said.
"Well,
what the hell did you expect me to do?"
"The
best you can, that's all." Crawford rose to leave. "Busywork's been a
narcotic for me sometimes, especially after I quit the booze. For you too, I
think."
Graham
was angry. Crawford was right, of course.
Graham
was a natural procrastinator, and he knew it. Long ago in school he had made up
for it with speed. He was not in school now.
There
was something else he could do, and he had known it for days. He could wait
until he was driven to it by desperation in the last days before the full moon.
Or he could do it now, while it might be of some use.
There
was an opinion he wanted. A very strange view he needed to share; a mindset he
had to recover after his warm round years in the Keys.
The
reasons elacked like roller-coaster cogs pulling up to the first long plunge,
and at the top, unaware that he clutched his belly, Graham said it aloud.
"I
have to see Lecter."
Dr. Frederick Chilton, chief of
staff at the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, came around
his desk to shake Will Graham's hand.
"Dr.
Bloom called me yesterday, Mr. Graham - or should I call you Dr. Graham?"
"I'm
not a doctor."
"I
was delighted to hear from Dr. Bloom, we've known each other for years. Take
that chair."
"We
appreciate your help, Dr. Chilton."
"Frankly,
I sometimes feel like Lecter's secretary rather than his keeper," Chilton
said. "The volume of his mail alone is a nuisance. I think among some
researchers it's considered chic to correspond with him - I've seen his letters
framed in psychology departments - and for a while it seemed that every
Ph.D. candidate in the field wanted to interview him. Glad to cooperate with you,
of course, and Dr. Bloom."
"I
need to see Dr. Lecter in as much privacy as possible," Graham said.
"I may need to see him again or telephone him after today."
Chilton
nodded. "To begin with, Dr. Lecter will stay in his room. That is
absolutely the only place where he is not put in restraints. One wall of his
room is a double barrier which opens on the hall. I'll have a chair put there,
and screens if you like.
"I
must ask you not to pass him any objects whatever, other than paper free of
clips or staples. No ring binders, pencils, or pens. He has his own felt-tipped
pens."
"I
might have to show him some material that could stimulate him," Graham
said.
"You
can show him what you like as long as it's on soft paper. Pass him documents
through the sliding food tray. Don't hand anything through the barrier and do
not accept anything he might extend through the barrier. He can return papers
in the food tray. I insist on that. Dr. Bloom and Mr. Crawford assured me that
you would cooperate on procedure."
"I
will," Graham said. He started to rise.
"I
know you're anxious to get on with it, Mr. Graham, but I want to tell you
something first. This will interest you.
"It
may seem gratuitous to warn you, of all people, about Lecter. But he's
very disarming. For a year after he was brought here, he behaved perfectly and
gave the appearance of cooperating with attempts at therapy. As a result -
this was under the previous administrator - security around him was slightly
relaxed.
"On
the afternoon of July 8, 1976, he complained of chest pain. His restraints were
removed in the examining room to make it easier to give him an
electrocardiogram. One of his attendants left the room to smoke, and the other
turned away for a second. The nurse was very quick and strong. She managed to
save one of her eyes.
"You
may find this curious." Chilton took a strip of EKG tape from a drawer and
unrolled it on his desk. He traced the spiky line with his forefinger.
"Here, he's resting on the examining table. Pulse seventy-two. Here, he
grabs the nurse's head and pulls her down to him. Here, he is subdued by the
attendant. He didn't resist, by the way, though the attendant dislocated his
shoulder. Do you notice the strange thing? His pulse never got over
eighty-five. Even when he tore out her tongue."
Chilton
could read nothing in Graham's face. He leaned back in his chair and steepled
his fingers under his chin. His hands were dry and shiny.
"You
know, when Lecter was first captured we thought he might provide us with a
singular opportunity to study a pure sociopath," Chilton said. "It's
so rare to get one alive. Lecter is so lucid, so perceptive; he's trained in
psychiatry . . . and he's a mass murderer. He seemed cooperative, and we
thought that he could be a window on this kind of aberration. We thought we'd
be like Beaumont studying digestion through the opening in St. Martin's
stomach.
"As
it turned out, I don't think we're any closer to understanding him now than the
day he came in. Have you ever talked with Lecter for any length of time?"
"No.
I just saw him when . . . I saw him mainly in court. Dr. Bloom showed me his
articles in the journals," Graham said.
"He's
very familiar with you. He's given you a lot of thought."
"You
had some sessions with him?"
"Yes.
Twelve. He's impenetrable. Too sophisticated about the tests for them to
register anything. Edwards, Fabré, even Dr. Bloom himself had a crack at him. I
have their notes. He was an enigma to them too. It's impossible, of course, to
tell what he's holding back or whether he understands more than he'll say. Oh,
since his commitment he's done some brilliant pieces for The American
Journal of Psychiatry and The General Archives. But they're always
about problems he doesn't have. I think he's afraid that if we 'solve' him,
nobody will be interested in him anymore and he'll be stuck in a back ward
somewhere for the rest of his life."
Chilton
paused. He had practiced using his peripheral vision to watch his subject in
interviews. He believed that he could watch Graham this way undetected.
"The
consensus around here is that the only person who has demonstrated any
practical understanding of Hannibal Lecter is you, Mr. Graham. Can you tell me
anything about him?"
"No."
"Some
of the staff are curious about this: when you saw Dr. Lecter's murders, their
'style,' so to speak, were you able perhaps to reconstruct his fantasies? And
did that help you identify him?"
Graham
did not answer.
"We're
woefully short of material on that sort of thing. There's one single piece in The
Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Would you mind talking with some of the
staff - no, no, not this trip - Dr. Bloom was very severe with me on that
point. We're to leave you alone. Next trip, perhaps."
Dr.
Chilton had seen a lot of hostility. He was seeing some at the moment.
Graham
stood up. "Thank you, doctor. I want to see Lecter now."
#
# #
The
steel door of the maximum-security section closed behind Graham. He heard the
bolt slide home.
Graham
knew that Lecter slept most of the morning. He looked down the corridor. At
that angle he could not see into Lecter's cell, but he could tell that the
lights inside were dimmed.
Graham
wanted to see Dr. Lecter asleep. He wanted time to brace himself. If he felt
Lecter's madness in his head, he had to contain it quickly, like a spill.
To
cover the sound of his footsteps, he followed an orderly pushing a linen cart.
Dr. Lecter is very difficult to slip up on.
Graham
paused partway down the hall. Steel bars covered the entire front of the cell.
Behind the bars, farther than arm's reach, was a stout nylon net stretched
ceiling to floor and wall to wall. Through the barrier, Graham could see a
table and chair bolted to the floor. The table was stacked with softcover books
and correspondence. He walked up to the bars, put his hands on them, took his
hands away.
Dr.
Hannibal Lecter lay on his cot asleep, his head propped on a pillow against the
wall. Alexandre Dumas' Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was open
on his chest.
Graham
had stared through the bars for about five seconds when Lecter opened his eyes
and said, "That's the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court."
"I
keep getting it for Christmas."
Dr.
Lecter's eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points.
Graham felt each hair bristle on his nape. He put his hand on the back of his
neck.
"Christmas,
yes," Lecter said. "Did you get my card?"
"I
got it. Thank you."
Dr.
Lecter's Christmas card had been forwarded to Graham from the FBI crime
laboratory in Washington. He took it into the backyard, burned it, and washed
his hands before touching Molly.
Lecter
rose and walked over to his table. He is a small, lithe man. Very neat.
"Why don't you have a seat, Will? I think there are some folding chairs in
a closet just down that way. At least, that's where it sounds like they come
from."
"The
orderly's bringing one."
Lecter
stood until Graham was seated in the hall. "And how is Officer
Stewart?" he asked.
"Stewart's
fine." Officer Stewart left law enforcement after he saw Dr. Lecter's
basement He managed a motel now. Graham did not mention this. He didn't think
Stewart would appreciate any mail from Lecter.
"Unfortunate
that his emotional problems got the better of him. I thought he was a very
promising young officer. Do you ever have any problems, Will?"
"No."
"Of
course you don't."
Graham
felt that Lecter was looking through to the back of his skull. His attention
felt like a fly walking around in there.
"I'm
glad you came. It's been what now, three years? My callers are all
professional. Banal clinical psychiatrists and grasping second-rate doctors of
psychology from silo colleges somewhere. Pencil lickers trying to protect their
tenure with pieces in the journals."
"Dr.
Bloom showed me your article on surgical addiction in The Journal of
Clinical Psychiatry."
"And?"
"Very
interesting, even to a layman."
"A
layman . . . layman - layman. Interesting term," Lecter said. "So
many learned fellows going about. So many experts on government grants.
And you say you're a layman. But it was you who caught me, wasn't it, Will? Do
you know how you did it?"
"I'm
sure you've read the transcript. It's all in there."
"No
it's not. Do you know how you did it, Will?"
"It's
in the transcript. What does it matter now?"
"It
doesn't matter to me, Will."
"I
want you to help me, Dr. Lecter."
"Yes,
I thought so."
"It's
about Atlanta and Birmingham."
"Yes."
"You
read about it, I'm sure."
"I've
read the papers. I can't clip them. They won't let me have scissors, of course.
Sometimes they threaten me with loss of books, you know. I wouldn't want them
to think I was dwelling on anything morbid." He laughed. Dr. Lecter has
small white teeth. "You want to know how he's choosing them, don't
you?"
"I
thought you would have some ideas. I'm asking you to tell me what they
are."
"Why
should I?"
Graham
had anticipated the question. A reason to stop multiple murders would not occur
readily to Dr. Lecter.
"There
are things you don't have," Graham said. "Research materials,
filmstrips even. I'd speak to the chief of staff."
"Chilton.
You must have seen him when you came in. Gruesome, isn't it? Tell me the truth,
he fumbles at your head like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle, doesn't he?
Watched you out of the corner of his eye. Picked that up, didn't you?
You may not believe this, but he actually tried to give me a Thematic
Apperception Test. He was sitting there just like the Cheshire cat waiting for
Mf 13 to come up. Ha. Forgive me, I
forget that you're not among the anointed. It's a card with a woman in bed and
a man in the foreground. I was supposed to avoid a sexual interpretation. I
laughed. He puffed up and told everybody I avoided prison with a Ganser
syndrome - never mind, it's boring."
"You'd
have access to the AMA filmstrip library."
"I
don't think you'd get me the things I want."
"Try
me."
"I
have quite enough to read as it is."
"You'd
get to see the file on this case. There's another reason."
"Pray."
"I
thought you might be curious to find out if you're smarter than the person I'm
looking for."
"Then,
by implication, you think you are smarter than I am, since you caught me."
"No.
I know I'm not smarter than you are."
"Then
how did you catch me, Will?"
"You
had disadvantages."
"What
disadvantages?"
"Passion.
And you're insane."
"You're
very tan, Will."
Graham
did not answer.
"Your
hands are rough. They don't look like a cop's hands anymore. That shaving
lotion is something a child would select. It has a ship on the bottle, doesn't
it?" Dr. Lecter seldom holds his head upright. He tilts it as he asks a
question, as though he were screwing an auger of curiosity into your face.
Another silence, and Lecter said, "Don't think you can persuade me with
appeals to my intellectual vanity."
"I
don't think I'll persuade you. You'll do it or you won't. Dr. Bloom is working
on it anyway, and he's the most-"
"Do
you have the file with you?"
"Yes."
"And pictures?"
"Yes."
"Let me have them, and I might consider
it."
"No."
"Do you dream much, Will?"
"Good-bye, Dr. Lecter."
"You haven't threatened to take away my books
yet."
Graham walked away.
"Let me have the file, then. I'll tell you what
I think."
Graham had to pack the abridged file tightly into the
sliding tray. Lecter pulled it through.
"There's a summary on top. You can read that
now," Graham said.
"Do you mind if I do it privately? Give me an
hour." Graham waited on a tired plastic couch in a grim lounge. Orderlies
came in for coffee. He did not speak to them. He stared at small objects in the
room and was glad they held still in his vision. He had to go to the rest room
twice. He was numb.
The turnkey admitted him to the maximum-security
section again.
Lecter sat at his table, his eyes filmed with
thought. Graham knew he had spent most of the hour with the pictures.
"This is a very shy boy, Will. I'd love to meet
him . . . Have you considered the possibility that he's disfigured? Or that he
may believe he's disfigured?"
"The mirrors."
"Yes. You notice he smashed all the mirrors in
the houses, not just enough to get the pieces he wanted. He doesn't just put
the shards in place for the damage they cause. They're set so he can see
himself. In their eyes - Mrs. Jacobi and . . . What was the other name?"
"Mrs. Leeds."
"Yes."
"That's interesting," Graham said.
"It's not 'interesting.' You'd thought of that
before."
"I had considered it."
"You just came here to look at me. Just to get
the old scent again, didn't you? Why don't you just smell yourself?"
"I want your opinion."
"I don't have one right now."
"When
you do have one, I'd like to bear it."
"May
I keep the file?"
"I
haven't decided yet," Graham said.
"Why
are there no descriptions of the
grounds? Here we have frontal views of the houses, floor
plans, diagrams of the rooms where the deaths occurred, and little mention of
the grounds. What were the yards like?"
"Big
backyards, fenced, with some hedges. Why?"
"Because,
my dear Will, if this pilgrim feels a special relationship with the moon, he
might like to go outside and look at it. Before he tidies himself up, you
understand. Have you seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black.
Of course, it keeps the distinctive sheen. If one were nude, say, it would be
better to have outdoor privacy for that sort of thing. One must show some
consideration for the neighbors, hmmmm?"
"You
think the yard might be a factor when he selects victims?"
"Oh
yes. And there will be more victims, of course. Let me keep the file, Will.
I'll study it. When you get more files, I'd like to see them, too. You can call
me. On the rare occasions when my lawyer calls, they bring me a telephone. They
used to patch him through on the intercom, but everyone listened of course.
Would you like to give me your home number?"
"No."
"Do
you know how you caught me, Will?"
"Good-bye,
Dr. Lecter. You can leave messages for me at the number on the file."
Graham walked away.
"Do
you know how you caught me?"
Graham
was out of Lecter's sight now, and he walked faster toward the far steel door.
"The
reason you caught me is that we're just alike"
was the last thing Graham heard as the steel door closed
behind him.
He
was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness. Walking with his head down,
speaking to no one, he could hear his blood like a hollow drumming of wings. It
seemed a very short distance to the outside. This was only a building; there
were only five doors between Lecter and the outside. He had the absurd feeling
that Leeter had walked out with him. He stopped outside the entrance and looked
around him, assuring himself that he was alone.
From
a car across the street, his long lens propped on the window sill, Freddy
Lounds got a nice profile shot of Graham in the doorway and
the words in stone above him: "Chesapeake State Hospital for the
Criminally Insane."
As it turned out, The National Tattler cropped
the picture to just Graham's face and the last two words in the stone.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter lay on his
cot with the cell lights down after
Graham left him. Several hours passed.
For
a while he had textures; the weave of the pillowcase against his hands clasped
behind his head, the smooth membrane that lined his cheek.
Then
he had odors and let his mind play over them. Some were real, some were not.
They had put Clorox in the drains; semen. They were serving chili down the
hall; sweat-shifened khaki. Graham would not give him his home telephone
number; the bitter green smell of cut cocklebur and teaweed.
Lecter
sat up. The man might have been civil. His thoughts had the warm brass smell of
an electric clock.
Lecter
blinked several times, and his eyebrows rose. He turned up the lights and wrote
a note to Chilton asking for a telephone to call his counsel.
Lecter
was entitled by law to speak with his lawyer in privacy and he hadn't abused
the right. Since Chilton would never allow him to go to the telephone, the
telephone was brought to him.
Two
guards brought it, unrolling a long cord from the telephone jack at their desk.
One of the guards had the keys. The other held a can of Mace.
"Go
to the back of the cell, Dr. Lecter. Face the wall. If you turn around or
approach the barrier before you hear the lock snap, I'll Mace you in the face.
Understand?"
"Yes
indeed," Lecter said. "Thank you so much for bringing the
telephone."
He
had to reach through the nylon net to dial. Chicago information gave him
numbers for the University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry and Dr. Alan
Bloom's office number. He dialed the psychiatry department switchboard.
"I'm
trying to reach Dr. Alan Bloom."
"I'm
not sure he's in today, but I'll connect you."
"Just
a second, I'm supposed to know his secretary's name and I'm embarrassed to say
I've forgotten it."
"Linda
King. Just a moment."
"Thank
you."
The
telephone rang eight times before it was picked up.
"Linda
King's desk."
"Hi,
Linda?"
"Linda
doesn't come in on Saturday."
Dr.
Lecter had counted on that. "Maybe you could help me, if you don't mind.
This is Bob Greer at Blame and Edwards Publishing Company. Dr. Bloom asked me
to send a copy of the Overholser book, The Psychiatrist and the Law, to
Will Graham, and Linda was supposed to send me the address and phone number,
but she never did."
"I'm
just a graduate assistant, she'll be in on Mon-"
"I
have to catch Federal Express with it in about five minutes, and I hate to
bother Dr. Bloom about it at home because he told Linda to send it and I don't
want to get her in hot water. It's right there in her Rolodex or whatever. I'll
dance at your wedding if you'll read it to me."
"She
doesn't have a Rolodex."
"How
about a Call Caddy with the slide on the side?"
"Yes."
"Be
a darling and slide that rascal and I won't take up any more of your
time."
"What
was the name?"
"Graham.
Will Graham."
"All
right, his home number is 305 JL5-7002."
"I'm
supposed to mail it to his house."
"It
doesn't give the address of his house."
"What
does it have?"
"Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Tenth and Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. Oh, and Post
Office Box 3680, Marathon, Florida."
"That's
fine, you're an angel."
"You're welcome."
Lecter felt much better. He thought he
might surprise Graham with a call sometime, or if the man couldn't be civil, he
might have a hospital-supply house mail Graham a colostomy bag for old times'
sake.
Seven hundred miles to
the southwest, in the cafeteria at Gateway Film Laboratory of St. Louis,
Francis Dolarhyde was waiting for a hamburger. The entrées offered in the steam
table were filmed over. He stood beside the cash register and sipped coffee
from a paper cup.
A
red-haired young woman wearing a laboratory smock came into the cafeteria and
studied the candy machine. She looked at Francis Dolarhyde's back several times
and pursed her lips. Finally she walked over to him and said, "Mr.
D.?"
Dolarhyde turned. He
always wore red goggles outside the darkroom. She kept her eyes on the
nosepiece of the goggles.
"Will you sit down
with me a minute? I want to tell you some thing."
"What can you tell
me, Eileen?"
"That I'm really
sorry. Bob was just really drunk and, you know, clowning around. He didn't mean
anything. Please come sit down. Just for a minute. Will you do that?"
"Mmmm-hmmm."
Dolarhyde never said "yes," as he had trouble with the sibilant /s/.
They sat. She twisted a
napkin in her hands.
"Everybody was
having a good time at the party and we were glad you came by," she said.
"Real glad, and surprised, too. You know how Bob is, he does voices all
the time - he ought to be on the radio. He did two or three accents, telling
jokes and all - he can talk just like a Negro. When he did that other voice, he
didn't mean to make you feel bad. He was too drunk to know who was there."
"They were all
laughing and then they . . . didn't laugh." Dolarhyde never said
"stopped" because of the fricative /s/.
"That's when Bob
realized what he had done."
"He went on,
though."
"I know it,"
she said, managing to look from her napkin to his goggles without lingering on
the way. "I got on his case about it, too. He said he didn't mean
anything, he just saw he was into it and tried to keep up the joke. You saw how
red his face got."
"He invited me to .
. . perform a duet with him."
"He hugged you and
tried to put his arm around you. He wanted you to laugh it off, Mr. D."
"I've laughed it
off, Eileen."
"Bob feels
terrible."
"Well, I don't want
him to feel terrible. I don't want that. Tell him for me. And it won't make it
any different here at the plant. Golly, if I had talent like Bob I'd make jo .
. . a joke all the time." Dolarhyde avoided plurals whenever he could.
"We'll all get together before long and he'll know how I feel."
"Good, Mr. D. You
know he's really, under all the fun, he's a sensitive guy."
"I'll bet. Tender, I
imagine." Dolarhyde's voice was muffled by his hand. When seated, he
always pressed the knuckle of his forefinger under his nose.
"Pardon?"
"I think you're good
for him, Eileen."
"I think so, I
really do. He's not drinking but just on weekends. He just starts to relax and
his wife calls the house. He makes faces while I talk to her, but I can tell
he's upset after. A woman knows." She tapped Dolarhyde on the wrist and,
despite the goggles, saw the touch register in his eyes. "Take it easy,
Mr. D. I'm glad we had this talk."
"I am too,
Eileen."
Dolarhyde watched her
walk away. She had a suck mark on the back of her knee. He thought, correctly,
that Eileen did not appreciate him. No one did, actually.
The great darkroom was
cool and smelled of chemicals. Francis Dolarhyde checked the developer in the A
tank. Hundreds of feet of home-movie film from all over the country moved
through the tank hourly. Temperature and freshness of the chemicals were
critical. This was his responsibility, along with all the other operations
until the film had passed through the dryer. Many times a day he lifted samples
of film from the tank and checked them frame by frame.
The darkroom was quiet.
Dolarhyde discouraged chatter among his assistants and communicated with them
largely in gestures.
When the evening shift ended, he remained alone in the darkroom to
develop, dry, and splice some film of his own.
# # #
Dolarhyde got home about ten P.M. He lived alone in a big house
his grandparents had left him. It stood at the end of a gravel drive that runs
through an apple orchard north of St. Charles, Missouri, across the Missouri
River from St. Louis. The orchard's absentee owner did not take care of it.
Dead and twisted trees stood among the green ones. Now, in late July, the smell
of rotting apples hung over the orchard. There were many bees in the daytime.
The nearest neighbor was a half-mile away.
Dolarhyde always made an inspection tour of the house as soon as he got
home; there had been an abortive burglary attempt some years before. He flicked
on the lights in each room and looked around. A visitor would not think he
lived alone. His grandparents' clothes still hung in the closets, his
grandmother's brushes were on her dresser with combings of hair in them. Her
teeth were in a glass on the bedside table. The water had long since
evaporated. His grandmother had been dead for ten years.
(The funeral director had asked him, "Mr. Dolarhyde, wouldn't you
like to bring me your grandmother's teeth?" He replied, "Just drop
the lid.")
Satisfied that he was alone in the house, Dolarhyde went upstairs, took
a long shower, and washed his hair.
He put on a kimono of a synthetic material that felt like silk and lay
down on his narrow bed in the room he had occupied since childhood. His
grandmother's hair dryer had a plastic cap and hose. He put on the cap and,
while he dried, he thumbed through a new high-fashion magazine. The hatred and
brutishness in some of the photographs were remarkable.
He began to feel excited. He swiveled the metal shade of his reading
lamp to light a print on the wall at the foot of the bed. It was William
Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.
The picture had stunned him the first time he saw it. Never before had
he seen anything that approached his graphic thought. He felt that Blake must
have peeked in his ear and seen the Red Dragon. For weeks Dolarhyde had worried
that his thoughts might glow out his ears, might be visible in the darkroom,
might fog the film. He put cotton balls in his ears. Then, fearing that cotton
was too flammable, he tried steel wool. That made his ears bleed. Finally he
cut small pieces of asbestos cloth from an ironing-board cover and rolled them
into little pills that would fit in his ears.
The Red Dragon was all he
had for a long time. It was not all he had now. He felt the beginnings of an
erection.
He had wanted to go
through this slowly, but now he could not wait.
Dolarhyde closed the
heavy draperies over windows in the downstairs parlor. He set up his screen
and projector. His grandfather had put a La-Z-Boy recliner in the parlor, over
his grandmother's objections. (She had put a doily on the headrest.) Now
Dolarhyde was glad. It was very comfortable. He draped a towel over the arm of
the chair.
He turned out the lamps.
Lying back in the dark room, he might have been anywhere. Over the ceiling
fixture he had a good light machine which rotated, making varicolored dots of
light crawl over the walls, the floor, his skin. He might have been reclining
on the acceleration couch of a space vehicle, in a glass bubble out among the
stars. When he closed his eyes he thought he could feel the points of light
move over him, and when he opened them, those might be the lights of cities
above or beneath him. There was no more down or up. The light machine turned
faster as it got warm, and the dots swarmed over him, flowed over furniture in
angular streams, fell in meteor showers down the walls. He might have been a
comet plunging through the Crab Nebula.
There was one place
shielded from the light. He had placed a piece of cardboard near the machine,
and it cast a shadow over the movie screen.
Sometimes, in the future,
he would smoke first to heighten the effect, but he did not need it now, this
time.
He thumbed the drop
switch at his side to start the projector. A white rectangle sprang on the
screen, grayed and streaked as the leader moved past the lens, and then the
gray Scotty perked up his ears and ran to the kitchen door, shivering and
wagging his stump of a tail. A cut to the Scotty ranning beside a curb, turning
to snap at his side as he ran.
Now Mrs. Leeds came into
the kitchen carrying groceries. She laughed and touched her hair. The children
came in behind her.
A cut to a badly lit shot
in Dolarhyde's own bedroom upstairs. He is standing nude before the print of The
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. He is wearing
"combat glasses," the close-fitting wraparound plastic glasses
favored by hockey players. He has an erection, which he improves with his hand.
The focus blurs as he
approaches the camera with stylized movements, hand reaching to change the
focus as his face fills the frame. The picture quivers and sharpens suddenly to
a close-up of his mouth, his disfigured upper lip rolled back, tongue out
through the teeth, one rolling eye still in the frame. The mouth fills the
screen, writhing lips pulled back from jagged teeth and darkness as his mouth
engulfs the lens.
The difficulty of the
next part was evident.
A bouncing blur in a
harsh movie light became a bed and Charles Leeds thrashing, Mrs. Leeds sitting
up, shielding her eyes, turning to Leeds and putting her hands on him, rolling
toward the edge of the bed, legs tangled in the covers, traying to rise. The
camera jerked toward the ceiling, molding whipping across the screen like a
stave, and then the picture steadied, Mrs. Leeds back down on the mattress, a
dark spot on her nightdress spreading and Leeds, hands to his neck and eyes
wild rising. The screen went black for five beats, then the tic of a splice.
The camera was steady
now, on a tripod. They were all dead now. Arranged. Two children seated against
the wall facing the bed, one seated across the corner from them facing the
camera. Mr. and Mrs. Leeds in bed with the covers over them. Mr. Leeds propped
up against the headboard, the sheet covering the rope around his chest and his
head lolled to the side.
Dolarhyde came into the
picture from the left with the stylized movements of a Balinese dancer.
Blood-smeared and naked except for his glasses and gloves, he mugged and
capered among the dead. He approached the far side of the bed, Mrs. Leeds's
side, took the corner of the covers, whipped them off the bed and held the pose
as though he had executed a veronica.
Now, watching in the
parlor of his grandparents' house, Dolarhyde was covered with a sheen of sweat.
His thick tongue ran out constantly, the scar on his upper lip wet and shiny
and he moaned as he stimulated himself.
Even at the height of his
pleasure he was sorry to see that in the film's ensuing scene he lost all his
grace and elegance of motion, rooting piglike with his bottom turned carelessly
to the camera. There were no dramatic pauses, no sense of pace or climax, just
brutish frenzy.
It was wonderful anyway.
Watching the film was wonderful. But not as wonderful as the acts themselves.
Two major flaws,
Dolarhyde felt, were that the film did not actually show the deaths of the
Leedses and that his own performance was poor toward the end. He seemed to lose
all his values. That was not how the Red Dragon would do it.
Well. He had many films
to make and, with experience, he hoped he could maintain some aesthetic
distance, even in the most intimate moments.
He must bear down. This
was his life's work, a magnificent thing. It would live forever.
He must press on soon. He
must select his fellow performers. Already he had copied several films of
Fourth of July family outings. The end of summer always brought a rush of
business at the film-processing plant as vacation movies came in. Thanksgiving
would bring another rush.
Families were mailing
their applications to him every day.
The
plane from Washington to Birmingham was half-empty. Graham took a
window seat with no one beside him.
He declined the tired sandwich the stewardess offered
and put his Jacobi file on the tray table. At the front he had listed the
similarities between the Jacobis and the Leedses.
Both couples were in their late thirties, both had
children - two boys and a girl. Edward Jacobi had another son, by a previous
marriage, who was away at college when the family was killed.
Both parents in each case had college degrees, and
both families lived in two-story houses in pleasant suburbs. Mrs. Jacobi and
Mrs. Leeds were attractive women. The families had some of the same credit
cards and they subscribed to some of the same popular magazines.
There the similarities ended. Charles Leeds was a tax
attorney, while Edward Jacobi was an engineer and metallurgist. The Atlanta
family were Presbyterian; the Jacobis were Catholic. The Leedses were lifelong
Atlanta residents, while the Jacobis had lived in Birmingham only three
months, transferred there from Detroit.
The word "random" sounded in Graham's head
like a dripping faucet. "Random selection of victims," "no
apparent motive" - newspapers used those terms, and detectives spat them
out in anger and frustration in homicide squad rooms.
"Random" wasn't accurate, though. Graham
knew that mass murderers and serial murderers do not select their victims at
random.
The man who killed the Jacobis and the Leedses saw
something in them that drew him and drove him to do it. He might have known
them well - Graham hoped so - or he might not have known them at all. But
Graham was sure the killer saw them at some time before he killed them. He
chose them because something in
them spoke to him, and the women were at the core of it. What was it?
There
were some differences in the crimes.
Edward
Jacobi was shot as he came down the stairs carrying a flashlight - probably he
was awakened by a noise.
Mrs.
Jacobi and her children were shot in the head, Mrs. Leeds in the abdomen. The
weapon was a nine-millimeter automatic pistol in all the shootings. Traces of
steel wool from a homemade silencer were found in the wounds. The cartridge
cases bore no fingerprints.
The
knife had been used only on Charles Leeds. Dr. Princi believed it was
thin-bladed and very keen, possibly a fileting knife.
The
methods of entry were different too; a patio door pried open at the Jacobis',
the glass cutter at the Leedses'.
Photographs
of the crime in Birmingham did not show the quantity of blood found at the
Leedses', but there were stains on the bedroom walls about two and one-half
feet above the floor. So the killer had an audience in Birmingham too. The
Birmingham police checked the bodies for fingerprints, induding the
fingernails, and found nothing. Burial for a summer month in Birmingham would
destroy any prints like the one on the Leeds child.
In
both places were the same blond hairs, same spit, same semen. Graham propped
photographs of the two smiling families against the seat back in front of him
and stared at them for a long time in the hanging quiet of the airplane.
What
could have attracted the murderer specifically to them? Graham
wanted very much to believe there was a common factor and that he would find it
soon.
Otherwise
he would have to enter more houses and see what the Tooth Fairy had left for
him.
#
# #
Graham
got directions from the Birmingham field office and checked in with the police
by telephone from the airport. The compact car he rented spit water from the
air-conditioner vents onto his hands and arms.
His
first stop was the Geehan Realty office on Dennison Avenue.
Geehan,
tall and bald, made haste across his turquoise shag to greet Graham. His smile
faded when Graham showed his identification and asked for the key to the
Jacobi house.
"Will
there be some cops in uniform out there today?" he asked, his hand on the
top of his head.
"I
don't know."
"I
hope to God not. I've got a chance to show it twice this afternoon. It's a nice
house. People see it and they forget this other. Last Thursday I had a couple
from Duluth, substantial retired people hot on the Sun Belt. I had them down to
the short rows -talking mortgages - I mean that man could have fronted a third,
when the squad car rode up and in they came. Couple asked
them questions and, boy, did they get some answers. These good officers gave
'em the whole tour - who was laying where. Then it was Good-bye, Geehan, much
obliged for your trouble. I try to show 'em how safe we've fixed it' but they
don't listen. There they go, jake-legged through the gravel, climbing back in
their Sedan de Ville."
"Have
any single men asked to look at it?"
"They
haven't asked me. It's a multiple listing. I don't think so, though. Police
wouldn't let us start painting until, I don't know, we just got finished inside
last Tuesday. Took two coats of interior latex, three in places. We're still
working outside. It'll be a genuine showplace."
"How
can you sell it before the estate's probated?"
"I
can't close until probate, but that
doesn't mean I can't be ready. People could move in on a memorandum of
understanding. I need to do something. A business associate of mine is holding
the paper, and that interest just works all day and all night while you're
asleep."
"Who
is Mr. Jacobi's executor?"
"Byron
Metcalf, firm of Metcalf and Barnes. How long you figure on being out
there?"
"I
don't know. Until I've finished."
"You
can drop that key in the mail. You don't have to come back by."
#
# #
Graham
had the flat feeling of a cold trail as he drove out to the Jacobi house. It
was barely within the city limits in an area newly annexed. He stopped beside
the highway once to check his map before he found the turnoff onto an asphalt
secondary road.
More
than a month had passed since they were killed. What had he been doing then?
Putting a pair of diesels in a sixty-five foot Rybovich hull, signaling to
Ariaga in the crane to come down another half-inch. Molly came over in the late
afternoon and he and Molly and Ariaga sat under an awning in the cockpit of the
half-finished boat and ate the big prawns Molly brought and drank cold Dos
Equis beer. Ariaga explained the best way to clean crayfish, drawing the tail
fan in sawdust on the deck, and the sunlight, broken on the water, played on
the undersides of the wheeling gulls.
Water
from the air conditioner squirted on the front of Graham's shirt and he was in
Birmingham now and there were no prawns or gulls. He was driving, and pastures
and wooded lots were on his right with goats and horses in them, and on his
left was Stonebridge, a long-established residential area with a few elegant
homes and a number of rich people's houses.
He
saw the realtor's sign a hundred yards before he reached it. The Jacobi house
was the only one on the right side of the road. Sap from the pecan trees beside
the drive had made the gravel sticky, and it rattled inside the fenders of the
car. A carpenter on a ladder was installing window guards. The workman raised a
hand to Graham as he walked around the house.
A
flagged patio at the side was shaded by a large oak tree. At night the tree
would block out the floodlight in the side yard as well. This was where the
Tooth Fairy had entered, through sliding glass doors. The doors had been
replaced with new ones, the aluminum frames still bright and bearing the
manufacturer's sticker. Covering the sliding doors was a new wrought-iron
security gate. The basement door was new too -flush steel and secured by
deadbolts. The components of a hot tub stood in crates on the flagstones.
Graham
went inside. Bare floors and dead air. His footsteps echoed in the empty house.
The
new mirrors in the bathrooms had never reflected the Jacobis' faces or the
killer's. On each was a fuzzy white spot where the price had been torn off. A
folded dropeloth lay in a corner of the master bedroom. Graham sat on it long
enough for the sunlight through the bare windows to move one board-width across
the floor.
There
was nothing here. Nothing anymore.
If
he had come here immediately after the Jacobis were killed, would the Leedses
still be alive? Graham wondered. He tested the weight of that burden.
It
did not lift when he was out of the house and under the sky again.
Graham
stood in the shade of a pecan tree, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets,
and looked down the long drive to the road that passed in front of the Jacobi
house.
How
had the Tooth Fairy come to the Jacobi house? He had to drive. Where did he
park? The gravel driveway was too noisy for a midnight visit, Graham thought.
The Birmingham police did not agree.
#
# #
He
walked down the drive to the roadside. The asphalt road was bordered with
ditches as far as he could see. It might be possible to pull across the ditch
and hide a vehicle in the brush on the Jacobis' side of the road if the ground
were hard and dry.
Facing
the Jacobi house across the road was the single entrance to Stonebridge. The
sign said that Stonebridge had a private patrol service. A strange vehicle
would be noticed there. So would a man walking late at night. Scratch parking
in Stonebridge.
Graham
went back into the house and was surprised to find the telephone working. He
called the Weather Bureau and learned that three inches of rain fell on the day
before the Jacobis were killed. The ditches were full, then. The Tooth Fairy
did not hide his vehicle beside the asphalt road.
A
horse in the pasture beside the yard kept pace with Graham as he walked along
the whitewashed fence toward the rear of the property. He gave the horse a
Life-Saver and left him at the corner as he turned along the back fence behind
the outbuildings.
He
stopped when he saw the depression in the ground where the Jacobi children had
buried their cat Thinking about it in the Atlanta police station with
Springfield, he had pictured the outbuildings as white. Actually they were
dark green.
The
children had wrapped the cat in a dish towel and buried it in a shoebox with a
flower between its paws.
Graham
rested his forearm on top of the fence and leaned his forehead against it.
A pet funeral, solemn rite of childhood. Parents going back into the house, ashamed to pray. The children looking at one another, discovering new nerves in the place loss pierces. One bows her head, then they all do, the shovel taller than any of them. Afterward a discussion of whether or not the cat is in heaven with God and Jesus, and the children don't shout for a while.
A
certainty came to Graham as he stood, sun hot on the back of his neck: as
surely as the Tooth Fairy killed the cat, he had watched the children bury it.
He had to see that if he possibly could.
He
did not make two trips out here, one to kill the cat and the second for the
Jacobis. He came and killed the cat and waited for the children to find it.
There
was no way to determine exactly where the children found the cat. The police
had located no one who spoke to the Jacobis after noon, ten hours or so before
they died.
How
had the Tooth Fairy come, and where had he waited?
Behind
the back fence the brush began, running head-high for thirty yards to the
trees. Graham dug his wrinkled map out of his back pocket and spread it on the
fence. It showed an unbroken strip of woods a quarter-mile deep running across
the back of the Jacobi property and continuing in both directions. Beyond the
woods, bounding them on the south, was a section line road that paralleled the
one in front of the Jacobi house.
Graham
drove from the house back to the highway, measuring the distance on his
odometer. He went south on the highway and turned onto the section line road he
had seen on the map. Measuring again, he drove slowly along it until the
odometer showed him he was behind the Jacobi house on the other side of the
woods.
Here
the pavement ended at a low-income housing project so new it did not show on
his map. He pulled into the parking lot. Most of the cars were old and sagging
on their springs. Two were up on blocks.
Black
children played basketball on the bare earth around a single netless goal.
Graham sat on his fender to watch the game for a moment.
He
wanted to take off his jacket, but he knew the .44 Special and the flat camera
on his belt would attract attention. He always felt a curious embarrassment
when people looked at his pistol.
There
were eight players on the team wearing shirts. The skins had eleven, all
playing at once. Refereeing was by acclamation.
A
small skin, shoved down in the rebounding, stalked home mad. He came back
fortified with a cookie and dived into the pack again.
The
yelling and the thump of the ball lifted Graham's spirits.
One
goal, one basketball. It struck him again how many things the Leedses
had. The Jacobis too, according to the Birmingham police when they ruled out
burglary. Boats and sporting equipment, camping equipment, cameras and guns and
rods. It was another thing the families had in common.
And
with the thought of the Leedses and the Jacobis alive came the thought of how
they were afterward, and Graham couldn't watch basketball anymore. He took a
deep breath and headed for the dark woods across the road.
The
underbrush, heavy at the edge of the pine woods, thinned when
Graham reached the deep shade and he had easy going over the pine needles. The
air was warm and still. Blue jays in the trees ahead announced his coming.
The
ground sloped gently to a dry streambed where a few cypresses grew and the
tracks of raccoons and field mice were pressed into the red clay. A number of
human footprints marked the streambed, some of them left by children. All were
caved in and rounded, left several rains ago.
Past
the streambed the land rose again, changing to sandy loam that supported ferns
beneath the pines. Graham worked his way uphill in the heat until he saw the
light beneath the trees at the edge of the woods.
Between
the trunks he could see the upper story of the Jacobi house.
Undergrowth
again, head-high from the edge of the woods to the Jacobis'
back fence. Graham worked his way through it and stood at the fence looking
into the yard.
The
Tooth Fairy could have parked at the housing development and come through the
woods to the brush behind the house. He could have lured the cat into the brush
and choked it, the body limp in one hand as he crawled on his knees and other
hand to the fence. Graham could see the cat in the air, never twisting to
land on its feet, but hitting on its back with a thump in the yard.
The
Tooth Fairy did that in daylight - the children would not have found or buried
the cat at night.
And
he waited to see them find it. Did he wait for the rest of the day in the heat
of the underbrush? At the fence he would be visible through the rails. In order
to see the yard from farther back in the brush, he would have to stand and face
the windows of the house with the sun beating on him. Clearly he would go back
to the trees. So did Graham.
The
Birmingham police were not stupid. He could see where they had pushed through
the brush, searching the area as a matter of course. But that was before the
cat was found. They were looking for clues, dropped objects, tracks - not for a
vantage point.
He
went a few yards into the forest behind the Jacobi house and worked back and
forth in the dappled shade. First he took the high ground that afforded a
partial view of the yard and then worked his way down the tree line.
He
had searched for more than an hour when a wink of light from the ground caught
his eye. He lost it, found it again. It was the ring-pull tab from a soft-drink
can half-buried in the leaves beneath an elm tree, one of the few elms among
the pines.
He
spotted it from eight feet away and went no closer for five minutes while he
scanned the ground around the tree. He squatted and brushed the leaves away
ahead of him as he approached the tree, duck-walking in the path he made to
avoid ruining any impressions. Working slowly, he cleared the leaves all around
the trunk. No footprints had pressed through the mat of last year's leaves.
Near
the aluminum tab he found a dried apple core eaten thin by ants. Birds had
pecked out the seeds. He studied the ground for ten more minutes. Finally he
sat on the ground, stretched out his aching legs, and leaned back against the
tree.
A
cone of gnats swarmed in a column of sunlight. A caterpillar rippled along the
underside of a leaf.
There
was a wedge of red creek mud from the instep of a boot on the limb above his
head.
Graham
hung his coat on a branch and began to climb carefully on the opposite side of
the tree, peering around the trunk at the limbs above the wedge of mud. At
thirty feet be looked around the trunk, and there was the Jacobi house 175
yards away. It looked different from this height, the roof color dominant. He
could see the backyard and the ground behind the outbuildings very well. A
decent pair of field glasses would pick up the expression on a face easily at
this distance.
Graham
could hear traffic in the distance, and far away he heard a beagle on a case. A
cicada started its numbing bandsaw buzz and drowned out the other sounds.
A
thick limb just above him joined the trunk at a right angle to the Jacobi
house. He pulled himself up until he could see, and leaned around the trunk to
look at it.
Close
by his cheek a soft-drink can was wedged between the limb and the trunk.
"I
love it," Graham whispered into the bark. "Oh
sweet Jesus yes. Come on, can."
Still,
a child might have left it.
He
climbed higher on his side of the tree, dicey work on small branches, and moved
around until he could look down on the big limb.
A
patch of outer bark on the upper side of the limb was shaved away, leaving a
field of green inner bark the size of a playing card. Centered in the green
rectangle, carved through to the white wood, Graham saw
this:
6
It
was done carefully and cleanly with a very sharp knife. It was not the work of
a child.
Graham
photographed the mark, carefully bracketing his exposures.
The
view from the big limb was good, and it had been improved: the stub of a small
branch jutted down from the limb above. It had been clipped off to clear the
view. The fibers were compressed and the end slightly flattened in the cutting.
Graham
looked for the severed branch. If it had been on the ground, he would have seen
it. There, tangled in the limbs below, brown withered leaves amid the green
foliage.
The
laboratory would need both sides of the cut in order to measure the pitch of
the cutting edges. That meant coming back here with a saw. He made several
photographs of the stub. All the while he mumbled to himself.
I
think that after you killed the cat and threw it into the yard, my man, you
climbed up here and waited. I think you watched the children and passed the
time whittling and dreaming. When night came, you
saw them passing their bright windows and you watched the shades go down, and
you saw the lights go out one by one. And after a while you
climbed down and went in to them. Didn't
you? It wouldn't be too hard a climb straight down ftom the
big limb with a flashlight and the bright moon rising.
It
was a hard enough climb for Graham. He stuck a twig into the opening of the
soft-drink can, gently lifted it from the crotch of the tree, and descended,
holding the twig in his teeth when he had to use both hands.
Back
at the housing project, Graham found that someone had written "Levon is a
doo-doo head" in the dust on the side of his car. The height of the
writing indicated that even the youngest residents were well along in literacy.
He
wondered if they had written on the Tooth Fairy's car.
Graham
sat for a few minutes looking up at the rows of windows. There appeared to be
about a hundred units. It was possible that someone might remember a white
stranger in the parking lot late at night. Even though a month had passed, it
was well worth trying. To ask every resident, and get it done quickly, he would
need the help of the Birmingham police.
He
fought the temptation to send the drink can straight to Jimmy Price in
Washington. He had to ask the Birmingham police for manpower. It would be better
to give them what he had. Dusting the can would be a straightforward job.
Trying for fingerprints etched by acid sweat was another matter. Price could
still do it after Birmingham dusted, as long as the can wasn't handled with
bare fingers. Better give it to the police. He knew the FBI document section
would fall on the carving like a rabid mongoose. Pictures of that for
everybody, nothing lost there.
He
called Birmingham Homicide from the Jacobi house. The detectives arrived just
as the realtor, Geehan, was ushering in his prospective buyers.
Eileen was reading a National
Tattler article called "Filth in Your Bread!" when Dolarhyde came
into the cafeteria. She had eaten only the filling in her tuna-salad sandwich.
Behind the red goggles Dolarhyde's eyes zigged down
the ftont page of the Tattler. Cover lines in addition to "Filth in
Your Bread!" included "Elvis at Secret Love Retreat -Exclusive
Pix!!" "Stunning Breakthrough for Cancer Victims!" and the big
banner line "Hannibal the Cannibal Helps Lawmen - Cops Consult Fiend in
'Tooth Fairy' Murders."
He stood at the window absently stirring his coffee
until he heard Eileen get up. She dumped her tray in the trash container and
was about to throw in the Tattler when Dolarhyde touched her shoulder.
"May I have that paper, Eileen?"
"Sure, Mr. D. I just get it for the
horoscopes."
Dolarhyde read it in his office with the door closed.
Freddy Lounds had two bylines in the same double-page
center spread. The main story was a breathless reconstruction of the Jacobi and
Leeds murders. Since the police had not divulged many of the specifics, Lounds
consulted his imagination for lurid details. Dolarhyde found them banal.
The sidebar was more interesting:
Insane Fiend Consulted in Mass Murders
by Cop He Tried to Kill
by
Freddy Lounds
CHESAPEAKE,MD.
- Federal
manhunters, stymied in their search for the "Tooth Fairy,"
psychopathic slayer of entire families in Birmingham and Atlanta, have turned
to the most savage killer in captivity for help.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whose unspeakable practices were reported in these
pages three years ago, was consulted this week in his maximum-security-asylum
cell by ace investigator William (Will) Graham.
Graham suffered a near-fatal slashing at Lecter's hands when he unmasked
the mass murderer.
He was brought back from early retirement to spearhead the hunt for the
"Tooth Fairy."
What went on in this bizarre meeting of two mortal enemies? What was
Graham after?
"It takes one to catch one," a high federal official told this
reporter. He was referring to Lecter, known as "Hannibal the
Cannibal," who is both a psychiatrist and a mass murderer.
OR WAS HE REFERRING TO GRAHAM???
The Tattler has learned that Graham, former instructor in
forensics at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., was once confined to a mental
institution for a period of four weeks.
Federal officials refused to say why they placed a man with a history of
mental instability at the forefront of a desperate manhunt.
The nature of Graham's mental problem was not revealed, but one former
psychiatric worker called it "deep depression."
Garmon Evans, a paraprofessional formerly employed at Bethesda Naval
Hospital, said Graham was admitted to the psychiatric wing soon after he killed
Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the "Minnesota Shrike." Graham shot Hobbs to
death in 1975, ending Hobbs's eight-month reign of terror in Minneapolis.
Evans said Graham was withdrawn and refused to eat or speak during the
first weeks of his stay.
Graham has never been an FBI agent. Veteran observers attribute this to
the Bureau's strict screening procedures, designed to detect instability.
Federal sources would reveal only that Graham originally worked in the
FBI crime laboratory and was assigned teaching duties at the FBI Academy after
outstanding work both in the laboratory and in the field, where he served as a
"special investigator."
The Tattler learned that before his federal service, Graham was
in the homicide division of the New Orleans police department, a post he left
to attend graduate school in forensics at George Washington University.
One New Orleans officer who served with Graham commented, "Well,
you can call him retired, but the feds like to know be's around. It's like
having a king snake under the house. They may not see him much, but it's nice
to know he's there to eat the moccasins.
Dr. Lecter is confined for the rest of his life. If he is ever declared
sane, he will have to stand trial on nine counts of first-degree murder.
Lecter's attorney says the mass murderer spends his time writing useful
articles for the scientific journals and has an "ongoing dialogue" by
mall with some of the most respected figures in psychiatry.
Dolarhyde
stopped reading and looked at the pictures. There were two of them above the
sidebar. One showed Lecter pinned against the side of a state trooper's car.
The other was the picture of Will Graham taken by Freddy Lounds outside the
Chesapeake State Hospital. A small photograph of Lounds ran beside each of his
bylines.
Dolarhyde
looked at the pictures for a long time. He ran the tip of his forefinger over
them slowly, back and forth, his touch exquisitely sensitive to the rough
newsprint. Ink left a smudge on his fingertip. He wet the smudge with his
tongue and wiped it off on a Kleenex. Then he cut out the sidebar and put it in
his pocket.
#
# #
On his way
home from the plant, Dolarhyde bought toilet paper of the quick-dissolving kind
used in boats and campers, and a nasal inhaler.
He felt
good despite his hay fever; like many people who have undergone extensive
rhinoplasty, Dolarhyde had no hair in his nose and hay fever plagued him. So
did upper respiratory infections.
When a
stalled truck held him up for ten minutes on the Missouri River bridge to St.
Charles, he sat patiently. His black van was carpeted, cool and quiet.
Handel's Water Music played on the stereo.
He rippled
his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music and dabbed at his
nose.
Two women
in a convertible were in the lane beside him. They wore shorts and blouses tied
across the midriff. Dolarhyde looked down into the convertible from his van.
They seemed tired and bored squinting into the lowering sun. The woman on the
passenger side had her head against the seat back and her feet on the dash. Her
slumped posture made two creases across her bare stomach. Dolarhyde could see
a suck mark on the inside of her thigh. She caught him looking, sat up and
crossed her legs. He saw weary distaste in her face.
She said
something to the woman at the wheel. Both looked straight ahead. He knew they
were talking about him. He was so glad it did not make him angry. Few things
made him angry anymore. He knew that he was developing a becoming dignity.
The music
was very pleasant.
The
traffic in front of Dolarhyde began to move. The lane beside him was still
stalled. He looked forward to getting home. He tapped the wheel in time with
the music and rolled down the window with his other hand.
He hawked
and spit a blob of green phlegm into the lap of the woman beside him, hitting
her just beside the navel. Her curses sounded
high and thin over the Handel as he drove away.
#
# #
Dolarhyde's
great ledger was at least a hundred years old. Bound in black leather with brass
corners, it was so heavy a sturdy machine table supported it in the locked
closet at the top of the stairs. From the moment he saw it at the bankruptcy
sale of an old St. Louis printing company, Dolarhyde knew it should be his.
Now,
bathed and in his kimono, he unlocked the closet and rolled it out. When the
book was centered beneath the painting of the Great Red Dragon, he settled
himself in a chair and opened it. The smell of foxed paper rose to his face.
Across
the first page, in large letters he had illuminated himself, were
the words from Revelation: "And There Came a Great Red Dragon
Also . .
The first
item in the book was the only one not neatly mounted. Loose between the pages
was a yellowed photograph of Dolarhyde as a small child with his grandmother on
the steps of the big house. He is holding to Grandmother's skirt. Her arms are
folded and her back is straight.
Dolarhyde
tumed past it. He ignored it as though it had been left there by mistake.
There
were many clippings in the ledger, the earliest ones about the disappearances
of elderly women in St. Louis and Toledo. Pages between the clippings were
covered with Dolarhyde's writing-black ink in a fine copperplate script not
unlike William Blake's own handwriting.
Fastened
in the margins, ragged bits of scalp trailed their tails of hair like comets
pressed in God's scrapbook.
The
Jacobi clippings from Birmingham were there, along with film cartridges
and slides set in pockets glued to the pages.
So
were stories on the Leedses, with film beside them.
The
term "Tooth Fairy" had not appeared in the press until Atlanta.
The name was marked out in all the Leeds stories.
Now
Dolarhyde did the same with his Tattler clipping, obliterating
"Tooth Fairy" with angry slashes of a red marker pen.
He
turned to a new, blank page in his ledger and trimmed the Tattler clipping
to fit. Should Graham's picture go in? The words "Criminally Insane"
carved in the stone above Graham offended Dolarhyde. He hated the sight of any
place of confinement. Graham's face was closed to him. He set it aside for the
time being.
But Lecter . . . Lecter. This was not a good picture
of the doctor. Dolarhyde had a better one, which he fetched from a box in his
closet. It was published upon Lecter's committal and showed the fine eyes. Still,
it was not satisfactory. In Dolarhyde's mind, Lecter's likeness should be the
dark portrait of a Renaissance prince. For Lecter, alone among all men, might
have the sensitivity and experience to understand the glory, the majesty of
Dolarhyde's Becoming.
Dolarhyde
felt that Lecter knew the unreality of the people who die to help
you in these things - understood that they are not flesh, but
light and air and color and quick sounds quickly ended when you change them.
Like balloons of color bursting. That they are more important for the changing,
more important than the lives they scrabble after, pleading.
Dolarhyde bore screams as a sculptor bears dust from
the beaten stone.
Lecter
was capable of understanding that blood and breath were only elements undergoing
change to fuel his Radiance. Just as the source of light is burning.
He
would like to meet Lecter, talk and share with him, rejoice with him in their
shared vision, be recognized by him as John the Baptist recognized the One who
came after, sit on him as the Dragon sat on 666 in Blake's Revelation series,
and film his death as, dying, he melded with the strength of the Dragon.
Dolarhyde pulled on a new pair of rubber gloves and
went to his desk. He unrolled and discarded the outer layer of the toilet paper
he had bought. Then he unrolled a strip of seven sheets and tore it off.
Printing
carefully on the tissue with his left hand, he wrote a letter to Lecter.
Speech
is never a reliable indicator of how a person writes; you never know.
Dolarhyde's speech was bent and pruned by disabilities real and imagined, and
the difference between his speech and his writing was startling. Still, he
found he could not say the most important things he felt.
He
wanted to hear from Lecter. He needed a personal response before he could tell
Dr. Lecter the important things.
How
could he manage that? He rummaged through his box of Lecter clippings, read
them all again.
Finally a
simple way occurred to him and he wrote again.
The letter
seemed too diffident and shy when he read it over. He had signed it "Avid
Fan."
He brooded
over the signature for several minutes.
"Avid
Fan" indeed. His chin rose an imperious fraction.
He
put his gloved thumb in his mouth, removed his dentures, and placed them on the
blotter.
The
upper plate was unusual. The teeth were normal, straight and white, but the
pink acrylic upper part was a tortuous shape cast to fit the twists and
fissures of his gums. Attached to the plate was a soft plastic prosthesis with
an obturator on top, which helped him dose off his soft palate in speech.
He
took a small case from his desk. It held another set of teeth. The upper
casting was the same, but there was no prosthesis. The crooked teeth had dark
stains between them and gave off a faint stench.
They
were identical to Grandmother's teeth in the bedside glass downstairs.
Dolarhyde's
nostrils flared at the odor. He opened his sunken smile and put them in place
and wet them with his tongue.
He folded
the letter across the signature and bit down hard on it. When he opened the
letter again, the signature was enclosed in an oval bite mark; his notary seal,
an imprimatur flecked with old blood.
Attorney Byron Metcalf
took off his tie at five o'clock, made himself a drink, and
put his feet up on his desk.
"Sure
you won't have one?"
"Another
time." Graham, picking the cockleburs off his cuffs, was grateful for the
air conditioning.
"I
didn't know the Jacobis very well," Metcalf said. "They'd only been
here three months. My wife and I were there for drinks a couple of times. Ed
Jacobi came to me for a new will soon after he was transferred here, that's how
I met him."
"But
you're his executor."
"Yes.
His wife was listed first as executor, then me as alternate in case she was
deceased or infirm. He has a brother in Philadelphia, but I gather they weren't
close."
"You
were an assistant district attorney."
"Yeah,
1968 to '72. I tan for DA in '72. It was
close, but I lost. I'm not sorry now.
"How
do you see what happened here, Mr. Metcalf?"
"The
first thing I thought about was Joseph Yablonski, the labor leader?"
Graham
nodded.
"A
crime with a motive, power in that case, disguised as an insane attack. We went
over Ed Jacobi's papers with a fine-tooth comb - Jerry Estridge from the DA's
office and I.
"Nothing.
Nobody stood to make much money off Ed Jacobi's death. He made a big salary and
he had some patents paying off, but he spent it almost as fast as it came in.
Everything was to go to the wife, with a little land in California entailed to
the kids and their descendants. He had a small spendthrift trust set up for
the surviving son. It'll pay his way through three more years of college. I'm
sure he'll still be a freshman by then."
"Niles
Jacobi."
"Yeah.
The kid gave Ed a big pain in the ass. He lived with his mother in California.
Went to Chino for theft. I gather his mother's a flake. Ed went out there to
see about him last year. Brought him back to Birmingham and put him in school
at Bardwell Community College. Tried to keep him at home, but he dumped on the
other kids and made it unpleasant for everybody. Mrs. Jacobi put up with it for
a while, but finally they moved him to a dorm."
"Where
was he?"
"On
the night of June 28?" Metcalf's
eyes were hooded as he looked at Graham. "The police wondered about that,
and so did I. He went to a movie and then back to school. It's verified.
Besides, he has type-O blood. Mr. Graham, I have to pick up my wife in half an
hour. We can talk tomorrow if you like. Tell me how I can help you.
"I'd
like to see the Jacobis' personal effects. Diaries, pictures, whatever."
"There's
not much of that - they lost about everything in a fire in Detroit before they
moved down here. Nothing suspicious - Ed was welding in the basement and the
sparks got into some paint he had stored down there and the house went up.
"There's
some personal correspondence. I have it in the lockboxes with the small
valuables. I don't remember any diaries. Everything else is in storage. Niles
may have some pictures, but I doubt it. Tell you what - I'm going to court at
nine-thirty in the morning, but I could get you into the bank to look at the
stuff and come back by for you afterward."
"Fine,"
Graham said. "One other thing. I could use copies of everything to do
with the probate: claims against the estate, any contest of the will,
correspondence. I'd like to have all the paper.
"The
Atlanta DA's office asked me for that already. They're comparing with the
Leeds estate in Atlanta, I know," Metcalf said.
"Still,
I'd like copies for myself."
"Okay,
copies to you. You don't really think it's money, though, do you?"
"No.
I just keep hoping the same name will come up here and in
Atlanta."
"So
do I."
#
# #
Student
housing at Bardwell Community College was four small dormitory buildings set
around a littered quadrangle of beaten earth. A stereo war was in progress when
Graham got there.
Opposing
sets of speakers on the motel-style balconies blared at each other across the
quad. It was Kiss versus the 1812 Overture.
A water balloon arched high in the air and burst on the
ground ten feet from Graham.
He
ducked under a clothesline and stepped over a bicycle to get through the
sitting room of the suite Niles Jacobi shared. The door to Jacobi's bedroom was
ajar and music blasted through the crack. Graham knocked.
No
response.
He
pushed open the door. A tall boy with a spotty face sat on one of the twin beds
sucking on a four-foot bong pipe. A girl in dungarees lay on the other bed.
The
boy's head jerked around to face Graham. He was struggling to think.
"I'm
looking for Niles Jacobi."
The
boy appeared stupefied. Graham switched off the stereo.
"I'm
looking for Niles Jacobi."
"Just
some stuff for my asthma, man. Don't you ever knock?"
"Where's
Niles Jacobi?"
"Fuck
if I know. What do you want him for?"
Graham
showed him the tin. "Try real hard to remember."
"Oh,
shit," the girl said.
"Narc,
goddammit. I ain't worth it, look, let's talk about this a minute, man."
"Let's
talk about where Jacobi is."
"I
think I can find out for you," the girl said. Graham waited while she
asked in the other rooms. Everywhere she went, commodes flushed.
There
were few traces of Niles Jacobi in the room - one photograph of the Jacobi
family lay on a dresser. Graham lifted a glass of melting ice off it and wiped
away the wet ring with his sleeve.
The
girl returned. "Try the Hateful Snake," she said.
#
# #
The
Hateful Snake bar was in a storefront with the windows painted dark
green. The vehicles parked outside were an odd assortment, big trucks looking
bobtailed without their trailers, compact cars, a lilac convertible, old Dodges
and Chevrolets crippled with high rear ends for the drag-strip look, four
full-dress Harley-Davidsons.
An
air conditioner, mounted in the transom over the door, dripped steadily onto
the sidewalk.
Graham
ducked around the dribble and went inside.
The
place was crowded and smelled of disinfectant and stale Canoe. The bartender, a
husky woman in overalls, reached over heads at the service bar to hand Graham
his Coke. She was the only woman there.
Niles
Jacobi, dark and razor-thin, was at the jukebox. He put the money in the
machine, but the man beside him pushed the buttons.
Jacobi
looked like a dissolute schoolboy, but the one selecting the music did not.
Jacobi's
companion was a strange mixture; he had a boyish face on a knobby, muscular
body. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, worn white over the objects in his pockets.
His arms were knotty with muscle, and he had large, ugly hands. One
professional tattoo on his left forearm said "Born to Fuck." A crude
jailhouse tattoo on his other arm said "Randy." His short jail
haircut had grown out unevenly. As he reached for a button on the lighted
jukebox, Graham saw a small shaved patch on his forearm.
Graham
felt a cold place in his stomach.
He
followed Niles Jacobi and "Randy" through the crowd to the back of
the room. They sat in a booth.
Graham
stopped two feet from the table.
"Niles,
my name is Will Graham. I need to talk with you for a few minutes."
Randy
looked up with a bright false smile. One of his front teeth was dead. "Do
I know you?"
"No.
Niles, I want to talk to you."
Niles
arched a quizzical eyebrow. Graham wondered what had happened to him in Chino.
"We
were having a private conversation here. Butt out," Randy said.
Graham
looked thoughtfully at the marred muscular forearms, the dot of adhesive in the
crook of the elbow, the shaved patch where Randy had tested the edge of his
knife. Knife fighter's mange.
I'm afraid of Randy. Fire or fall back.
"Did
you hear me?" Randy said. "Butt out."
Graham
unbuttoned his jacket and put his identification on the table.
"Sit
still, Randy. If you try to get up, you're gonna have two navels."
"I'm
sorry, sir." Instant inmate sincerity.
"Randy,
I want you to do something for me. I want you to reach in your left back pocket.
Just use two fingers. You'll find a five-inch knife in there with a Flicket
clamped to the blade. Put it on the table. . . . Thank you."
Graham
dropped the knife into his pocket. It felt greasy. "Now, in your other
pocket is your wallet. Get it out. You sold some blood today, didn't you?"
"So
what?"
"So
hand me the slip they gave you, the one you show next time at the blood bank.
Spread it out on the table."
Randy
had type-O blood. Scratch Randy.
"How
long have you been out of jail?"
"Three
weeks."
"Who's
your parole officer?"
"I'm
not on parole."
"That's
probably a lie." Graham wanted to roust Randy. He could get him for
carrying a knife over the legal length. Being in a place with a liquor license
was a parole violation. Graham knew he was angry at Randy because he had feared
him.
"Randy."
"Yeah."
"Get
out."
# # #
"I
don't know what I can tell you, I didn't know my father very well," Niles
Jacobi said as Graham drove him to the school. "He left Mother when I was
three, and I didn't see him after that - Mother wouldn't have it."
"He came to see you last spring."
"Yes."
"At Chino."
"You know about that."
"I'm just trying to get it straight. What
happened?"
"Well,
there he was in Visitors, uptight and trying not to look around - so many
people treat it like the zoo. I'd heard a lot about him from Mother, but
he didn't look so bad. He was just a man standing there in a tacky sport
coat."
"What
did he say?"
"Well,
I expected him either to jump right in my shit or to be real guilty,
that's the way it goes mostly in Visitors. But he just asked me if I thought I
could go to school. He said he'd go custody if I'd go to school. And try. 'You
have to help yourself a little. Try and help yourself, and I'll see you
get in school,' and like that."
"How
long before you got out?"
"Two
weeks."
"Niles,
did you ever talk about your family while you were in Chino? To your cellmates
or anybody?"
Niles
Jacobi looked at Graham quickly. "Oh. Oh, I see. No. Not about my father.
I hadn't thought about him in years, why would I talk about
him?"
"How
about here? Did you ever take any of your friends over to your parents'
house?"
"Parent,
not parents. She was not my mother."
"Did
you ever take anybody over there? School friends or . . ."
"Or
rough trade, Officer Graham?"
"That's
right."
"No."
"Never?"
"Not
once."
"Did
he ever mention any kind of threat, was he ever disturbed about anything in the
last month or two before it happened?"
"He
was disturbed the last time I talked to him, but it was just my grades. I had a
lot of cuts. He bought me two alarm clocks. There wasn't anything else that I
know of."
"Do
you have any personal papers of his, correspondence, photographs,
anything?"
"No."
"You
have a picture of the family. It's on the dresser in your room. Near the
bong."
"That's
not my bong. I wouldn't put that filthy thing in my mouth."
"I
need the picture. I'll have it copied and send it back to you. What else do you
have?"
Jacobi
shook a cigarette out of his pack and patted his pockets for matches.
"That's all. I can't imagine why they gave that to me. My father
smiling at Mrs. Jacobi and all the little Munchkins. You can have it. He
never looked like that to me."
#
# #
Graham
needed to know the Jacobis. Their new acquaintances in Birmingham were little
help.
Byron
Metcalf gave him the run of the lockboxes. He read the thin stack of letters,
mostly business, and poked through the jewelry and the silver.
For
three hot days he worked in the warehouse where the Jacobis' household goods
were stored. Metcalf helped him at night. Every crate on every pallet was
opened and their contents examined. Police photographs helped Graham see where
things had been in the house.
Most
of the furnishings were new, bought with the insurance from the Detroit fire.
The Jacobis hardly had time to leave their marks on their possessions.
One
item, a bedside table with traces of fingerprint powder still on it, held
Graham's attention. In the center of the tabletop was a blob of green wax.
For
the second time he wondered if the killer liked candlelight.
The
Birmingham forensics unit was good about sharing.
The
blurred print of the end of a nose was the best Birmingham and Jimmy Price in
Washington could do with the soft-drink can from the tree.
The
FBI laboratory's Firearms and Toolmarks section reported on the severed branch.
The blades that clipped it were thick, with a shallow pitch: it had been done
with a bolt cutter.
Document
section had referred the mark cut in the bark to the Asian Studies department
at Langley.
Graham
sat on a packing case at the warehouse and read the long report. Asian Studies
advised that the mark was a Chinese character which meant "You hit
it" or "You hit it on the head" - an expression sometimes used
in gambling. It was considered a "positive" or "lucky"
sign. The character also appeared on a Mah-Jongg piece, the Asian scholars
said. It marked the Red Dragon.
Crawford
at FBI headquarters in Washington was on the telephone with Graham at the
Birmingham airport when his secretary leaned into the office and flagged his
attention.
"Dr.
Chilton at Chesapeake Hospital on 2706. He says it's urgent." Crawford
nodded. "Hang on, Will." He punched the telephone.
"Crawford."
"Frederick
Chilton, Mr. Crawford, at the-"
"Yes,
Doctor."
"I have a note here, or two
pieces of a note, that appears to be from the man who killed those people in
Atlanta and-"
"Where did you get it?"
"From Hannibal Lecter's cell.
It's written on toilet tissue, of all things, and it has teeth marks pressed in
it."
"Can
you read it to me without handling it any more?" Straining to sound calm,
Chilton read it:
My dear Dr. Lecter,
I wanted to tell you I'm delighted that you have taken an interest in
me. And when I learned of your vast correspondence I thought Dare I? Of course
I do. I don't believe you'd tell them who I am, even if you knew. Besides, what
parficular body I currently occupy is trivia.
The important thing is what I am Becoming. I know that you alone can
understand this. I have some things I'd love to show you. Someday, perhaps, if
circumstances permit. I hope we can correspond . . .
"Mr. Crawford, there's a
hole torn and punched out. Then it says:
I have admired you for years and have a complete collection of your
press notices. Actually, I think of them as unfair reviews. As unfair as mine.
They like to sling demeaning nicknames, don't they? The Tooth Fairy. What could
be more inappropriate? It would shame me for you to see that if I didn't know
you had suffered the same distortions in the press.
Investigator Graham interests me. Odd-looking for a flatfoot, isn't he?
Not very handsome, but purposeful-looking.
You should have taught him not to meddle.
Forgive the stationery. I chose it because it will dissolve very quickly
if you should have to swallow it.
"There's a piece missing
here, Mr. Crawford. I'll read the bottom part:
If I hear from you, next time I might send you something wet. Until then
I remain your
Avid
Fan
Silence
after Chilton finished reading. “Are you there?”
“Yes.
Does Lecter know you have the note?”
“Not
yet. This morning he was moved to a holding cell while his quarters were
cleaned. Instead of using a proper rag, the cleaning man was pulling handfuls
of toilet paper off the roll to wipe down the sink. He found the note wound up
in the roll and brought it to me. They bring me anything they find hidden.”
“Where’s
Lecter now?”
“Still
in the holding cell.”
“Can
he see his quarters at all from there.”
“Let
me think. . . . No, no, he can’t.”
“Wait
a second, Doctor.” Crawford put Chilton on hold. He stared at the two winking
buttons on his telephone for several seconds without seeing them. Crawford,
fisher of men, was watching his cork move against the current. He got Graham
again.
“Will
. . . a note, maybe from the Tooth Fairy, hidden in Lecter’s cell at
Chesapeake. Sounds like a fan letter. He wants Lecter’s approval, he’s curious
about you. He’s asking questions.”
“How
was Lecter supposed to answer?”
“Don’t
know yet. Part’s torn out, part’s scratched out. Looks like there’s a chance of
correspondence as long as Lecter’s not aware that we know. I want the note for
the lab and I want to toss his cell, but it’ll be risky. If Lecter gets wise,
who knows how he could warn the bastard? We need the link but we need the note
too.”
Crawford
told Graham where Lecter was held, how the note was found. “It’s eighty miles
over to Chesapeake. I can’t wait for you, buddy. What do you think?”
“Ten
people dead in a month – we can’t play a long mail game. I say go for it.”
“I
am,” Crawford said.
“See
you in two hours.”
Crawford
hailed his secretary. “Sarah, order a helicopter. I want the next thing smoking
and I don’t care whose it is – ours, DCPD or Marines. I’ll be on the roof in
five minutes. Call Documents, tell them to have a document case up there. Tell
Herbert to scramble a search team. On the roof. Five minutes.”
He
picked up Chilton’s line.
“Dr.
Chilton, we have to search Lecter’s cell without his knowledge and we need
your help. Have you mentioned this to anybody else?”
“No.”
“Where’s
the cleaning man who found the note?”
“He’s
here in my office.”
“Keep
him there, please, and tell him to keep quiet. How long has Lecter been out of
his cell?”
“About
half an hour.”
“Is
that unusually long?”
“No,
not yet. But it takes only about a half-hour to clean it. Soon he’ll begin to
wonder what’s wrong.”
“Okay,
do this for me: Call your building superintendent or engineer, whoever’s in
charge. Tell him to shut off the water in the building and to pull the circuit
breakers on Lecter’s hall. Have the super walk down the hall past the holding
cell carrying tools. He’ll be in a hurry, pissed off, too busy to answer any
questions – got it? Tell him he’ll get an explanation from me. Have the garbage
pickup canceled for today if they haven’t already come. Don’t touch the note,
okay? We’re coming.”
Crawford
called the section chief, Scientific Analysis. “Brian, I have a note coming in
on the fly, possibly from the Tooth Fairy. Number-one priority. It has to go
back where it came from within the hour and unmarked. It’ll go to Hair and
Fiber, Latent Prints, and Documents, then to you, so coordinate with them, will
you? . . . Yes. I’ll walk it through. I’ll deliver it to you myself.”
#
# #
It
was warm - the federally mandated eighty degrees - in the elevator when
Crawford came down from the roof with the note, his hair blown silly by the
helicopter blast. He was mopping his face by the time he reached the Hair and
Fiber section of the laboratory.
Hair
and Fiber is a small section, calm and busy. The common room is stacked with
boxes of evidence sent by police departments all over the country; swatches of
tape that have sealed mouths and bound wrists, torn and stained clothing,
deathbed sheets.
Crawford
spotted Beverly Katz through the window of an examining room as he wove his
way between the boxes. She had a pair of child's coveralls suspended from a
hanger over a table covered with white paper. Working under bright lights in
the draft-free room, she brushed the coveralls with a metal spatula, carefully
working with the wale and across it, with the nap and against it. A sprinkle of
dirt and sand fell to the paper. With it, falling through the still air more
slowly than sand but faster than lint, came a tightly coiled hair. She cocked
her head and looked at it with her bright robin's eye.
Crawford
could see her lips moving. He knew what she was saying.
"Gotcha."
That's
what she always said.
Crawford
pecked on the glass and she came out fast, stripping off her white gloves.
"It
hasn't been printed yet, right?"
"No."
"I'm
set up in the next examining room." She put on a fresh pair of gloves
while Crawford opened the document case.
The
note, in two pieces, was contained gently between two sheets of plastic film.
Beverly Katz saw the tooth impressions and glanced up at Crawford, not wasting
time with the question.
He
nodded: the impressions matched the clear overlay of the killer's bite he had
carried with him to Chesapeake.
Crawford
watched through the window as she lifted the note on a slender dowel and hung it
over white paper. She looked it over with a powerful glass, then fanned it
gently. She tapped the dowel with the edge of a spatula and went over the paper
beneath it with the magnifying glass.
Crawford
looked at his watch.
Katz
flipped the note over another dowel to get the reverse side up. She removed one
tiny object from its surface with tweezers almost as fine as a hair.
She
photographed the torn ends of the note under high magnification and returned
it to its case. She put a clean pair of white gloves in the case with it. The
white gloves - the signal not to touch - would always be beside the evidence
until it was checked for fingerprints.
"That's
it," she said, handing the case back to Crawford. "One hair, maybe a
thirty-second of an inch. A couple of blue grains. I'll work it up. What else
have you got?"
Crawford
gave her three marked envelopes. "Hair from Lecter's comb. Whiskers from
the electric razor they let him use. This is hair from the cleaning man. Gotta
go."
"See
you later," Katz said. "Love your hair."
#
# #
Jimmy
Price in Latent Fingerprints winced at the sight of the porous toilet paper. He
squinted fiercely over the shoulder of his technician operating the
helium-cadmium laser as they tried to find a fingerprint and make it fluoresce.
Glowing smudges appeared on the paper, perspiration stains, nothing.
Crawford
started to ask him a question, thought better of it, waited with the blue light
reflecting off his glasses.
"We
know three guys handled this without gloves, right?" Price said.
"Yeah,
the cleanup man, Lecter, and Chilton."
"The
fellow scrubbing sinks probably had washed the oil off his fingers. But the
others -this stuff is terrible." Price held the paper to the light,
forceps steady in his mottled old hand. "I could fume it, Jack, but I
couldn't guarantee the iodine stains would fade out in the time you've
got."
"Ninhydrin?
Boost it with heat?" Ordinarily, Crawford would not have ventured a
technical suggestion to Price, but he was floundering for anything. He expected
a huffy reply, but the old man sounded rueful and sad.
"No.
We couldn't wash it after. I can't get you a print off this, Jack. There isn't
one."
"Fuck,"
Crawford said.
The
old man turned away. Crawford put his hand on Price's bony shoulder.
"Hell, Jimmy. If there was one, you'd have found it."
Price
didn't answer. He was unpacking a pair of hands that had arrived in another
matter. Dry ice smoked in his wastebasket. Crawford dropped the white gloves
into the smoke.
#
# #
Disappointment
growling in his stomach, Crawford hurried on to Documents where Lloyd Bowman
was waiting. Bowman had been called out of court and the abrupt shear in his
concentration left him blinking like a man just wakened.
"I
congratulate you on your hairstyle. A brave departure," Bowman said, his
hands quick and careful as he transferred the note to his work surface.
"How long do I have?"
"Twenty
minutes max."
The
two pieces of the note seemed to glow under Bowman's lights. His blotter showed
dark green through a jagged oblong hole in the upper piece.
"The
main thing, the first thing, is how Lecter was to reply," Crawford said
when Bowman had finished reading.
"Instructions
for answering were probably in the part torn out." Bowman worked steadily
with his lights and filters and copy camera as he talked. "Here in the top
piece he says 'I hope we can correspond . . .' and then the hole begins.
Lecter scratched over that with a felt-tip pen and then folded it and pinched
most of it out."
"He
doesn't have anything to cut with."
Bowman
photographed the tooth impressions and the back of the note under extremely
oblique light, his shadow leaping from wall to wall as he moved the light
through 360 degrees around the paper and his hands made phantom folding motions
in the air.
"Now
we can mash just a little." Bowman put the note between two panes of glass
to flatten the jagged edges of the hole. The tatters were smeared with
vermilion ink. He was chanting under his breath. On the third repetition
Crawford made out what he was saying. "You're so sly, but so am I."
Bowman
switched filters on his small television camera and focused it on the note. He
darkened the room until there was only the dull red glow of a lamp and the
blue-green of his monitor screen.
The
words "I hope we can correspond" and the jagged hole appeared
enlarged on the screen. The ink smear was gone, and on the tattered edges
appeared fragments of writing.
"Aniline
dyes in colored inks are transparent to infrared," Bowman said.
"These could be the tips of T's here and here. On the end is the tail of
what could be an M or N, or possibly an R." Bowman took a photograph and
turned the lights on. "Jack, there are just two common ways of carrying on
a communication that's one-way blind - the phone and publication. Could Lecter
take a fast phone call?"
"He
can take calls, but it's slow and they have to come in through the hospital
switchboard."
"Publication
is the only safe way, then."
"We
know this sweetheart reads the Tattler. The
stuff about Graham and Lecter was in the Tattler. I
don't know of any other paper that carried it."
"Three
T's and an R in Tattler. Personal column, you think?
It's a place to look."
Crawford
checked with the FBI library, then telephoned instructions to the Chicago
field office.
Bowman
handed him the case as he finished.
"The
Tattler comes out this evening,"
Crawford said. "It's printed in Chicago on Mondays and Thursdays. We'll
get proofs of the classified pages."
"I'll
have some more stuff-minor, I think," Bowman said.
"Anything
useful, fire it straight to Chicago. Fill me in when I get back from the
asylum," Crawford said on his way out the door.
The turnstile at Washington's
Metro Central spit Graham's fare card back to him and he came out into the hot
afternoon carrying his flight bag.
The
J. Edgar Hoover Building looked like a great concrete cage above the heat
shimmer on Tenth Street. The FBI's move to the new headquarters had been under
way when Graham left Washington. He had never worked there.
Crawford
met him at the escort desk off the underground driveway to augment Graham's
hastily issued credentials with his own. Graham looked tired and he was
impatient with the signing-in. Crawford wondered how he felt, knowing that the
killer was thinking about him.
Graham
was issued a magnetically encoded tag like the one on Crawford's vest. He
plugged it into the gate and passed into the long white corridors. Crawford
carried his flight bag.
"I
forgot to tell Sarah to send a car for you."
"Probably
quicker this way. Did you get the note back to Lecter all right?"
"Yeah,"
Crawford said. "I just got back. We poured water on the hall floor. Faked
a broken pipe and electrical short. We had Simmons - he's the assistant SAC
Baltimore now - we had him mopping when Lecter was brought back to his cell.
Simmons thinks he bought it."
"I
kept wondering on the plane if Lecter wrote it himself."
"That
bothered me too until I looked at it. Bite mark in the paper matches the ones
on the women. Also it's ball-point, which Lecter doesn't have. The person who
wrote it had read the Tattler, and
Lecter hasn't had a Tattler. Rankin
and Willingham tossed the cell. Beautiful job, but they didn't find diddly.
They took Polaroids first to get everything back just right. Then the cleaning
man went in and did what he always does."
"So
what do you think?"
"As
far as physical evidence toward an ID, the note is pretty much dreck,"
Crawford said. "Some way we've got to make the contact work for us, but
damn if I know how yet. We'll get the rest of the lab results in a few
minutes."
"You've
got the mail and phone covered at the hospital?"
"Standing
trace-and-tape order for any time Lecter's on the phone. He made a call
Saturday afternoon. He told Chilton he was calling his lawyer. It's a damn WATS
line, and I can't be sure.
"What
did his lawyer say?"
"Nothing.
We got a leased line to the hospital switchboard for Lecter's convenience in
the future, so that won't get by us again. We'll fiddle with his mail both
ways, starting next delivery. No problem with warrants, thank God."
Crawford
bellied up to a door and stuck the tag on his vest into the lock slot. "My
new office. Come on in. Decorator had some paint left over from a battleship he
was doing. Here's the note. This print is exactly the size."
Graham
read it twice. Seeing the spidery lines spell his name started a high tone
ringing in his head.
"The
library confirms the Tattler is
the only paper that carried a story about Lecter and you," Crawford said,
fixing himself an AlkaSeltzer. "Want one of these? Good for you. It was
published Monday night a week ago. It was on the stands Tuesday nationwide
-some areas not till Wednesday - Alaska and Maine and places. The Tooth Fairy
got one - couldn't have done it before Tuesday. He reads it, writes to Lecter.
Rankin and Willingham are still sifting the hospital trash for the envelope.
Bad job. They don't separate the papers from the diapers at Chesapeake.
"All
right, Lecter gets the note from the Tooth Fairy no sooner than Wednesday. He
tears out the part about how to reply and scratches over and pokes out one
earlier reference - I don't know why he didn't tear that out too."
"It
was in the middle of a paragraph full of compliments," Graham said.
"He couldn't stand to ruin them. That's why he didn't throw the whole thing
away." He rubbed his temples with his knuckles.
"Bowman
thinks Lecter will use the Tattler to
answer the Tooth Fairy. He says that's probably the setup. You think he'd
answer this thing?"
"Sure.
He's a great correspondent. Pen pals all over."
"If
they're using the Tattler, Lecter
would barely have time to get his answer in the issue they'll print tonight,
even if he sent it special delivery to the paper the same day he got the Tooth
Fairy's note. Chester from the Chicago office is down at the Tattler
checking the ads. The printers are putting the paper
together right now."
"Please
God don't stir the Tattler up,"
Graham said.
"The
shop foreman thinks Chester's a realtor trying to get a jump on the ads. He's
selling him the proof sheets under the table, one by one as they come off.
We're getting everything, all the classifieds, just to blow some smoke. All
right, say we find out how Lecter war to answer and we can duplicate the
method. Then we can fake a message to the Tooth Fairy - but what do we say? How
do we use it?"
"The
obvious thing is to try to get him to come to a mail drop," Graham said.
"Bait him with something he'd like to see. 'Important evidence' that
Lecter knows about from talking to me. Some mistake he made that we're waiting
for him to repeat."
"He'd
be an idiot to go for it."
"I
know. Want to hear what the best bait would be?"
"I'm
not sure I do."
"Lecter
would be the best bait," Graham said.
"Set
up how?"
"It
would be hell to do, I know that. We'd take Lecter into federal custody - Chilton
would never sit still for this at Chesapeake - and we stash him in maximum
security at a VA psychiatric hospital. We fake an escape.
"Oh,
Jesus."
"We
send the Tooth Fairy a message in next week's Tattler, after
the big 'escape.' It would be Lecter asking him for a rendezvous."
"Why
in God's name would anybody want to meet Lecter? I mean, even the Tooth
Fairy?"
"To
kill him, Jack." Graham got up. There was no window to look out of as he
talked. He stood in front of the "Ten Most Wanted," Crawford's only wall
decoration. "See, the Tooth Fairy could absorb him that way, engulf him,
become more than he is.
"You
sound pretty sure."
"I'm
not sure. Who's sure? What he said in the note was 'I have some things I'd love
to show you. Someday, perhaps, if circumstances permit.' Maybe it was a
serious invitation. I don't think he was just being polite."
"Wonder
what he's got to show? The victims were intact. Nothing missing but a little
skin and hair, and that was probably . . . How did Bloom put it?"
"Ingested,"
Graham said. "God knows what he's got. Tremont, remember Tremont's
costumes in Spokane? While he was strapped to a stretcher he was pointing with
his chin, still trying to show them to the Spokane PD. I'm not sure Lecter
would draw the Tooth Fairy, Jack. I say it's the best shot."
"We'd
have a goddamn stampede if people thought Lecter
was out. Papers all over us screaming. Best shot, maybe, but we'll save it for
last."
"He
probably wouldn't come near a mail drop, but he might be curious enough to look
at a mail drop to see if Lecter had sold him. If he could do it from a
distance. We could pick a drop that could be watched from only a few places a
long way off and stake out the observation points." It sounded weak to
Graham even as he said it.
"Secret
Service has a setup they've never used. They'd let us have it. But if we don't
put an ad in today, we'll have to wait until Monday before the next issue
comes out. Presses roll at five our time. That gives Chicago another hour and
fifteen minutes to come up with Lecter's ad, if there is one.
"What
about Lecter's ad order, the letter
he'd have sent the Tattler ordering
the ad -could we get to that quicker?"
"Chicago
put out some general feelers to the shop foreman," Crawford said.
"The mail stays in the classified advertising manager's office. They sell
the names and return addresses to mailing lists - outfits that sell products
for lonely people, love charms, rooster pills, squack dealers, 'meet beautiful
Asian girls,' personality courses, that sort of stuff.
"We
might appeal to the ad manager's citizenship and all and get a look, request
him to be quiet, but I don't want to chance it and risk the Tattler
slobbering all over us. It would take a warrant to go in
there and Bogart the mail. I'm thinking about it."
"If
Chicago turns up nothing, we could put an ad in anyway. If we're wrong about
the Tattler, we wouldn't lose anything,"
Graham said.
"And
if we're right that the Tattler is
the medium and we make up a reply based on what we have in this note and screw
it up - if it doesn't look right to him - we're down the tubes. I didn't ask
you about Birmingham. Anything?"
"Birmingham's
shut down and over with. The Jacobi house has been painted and redecorated and
it's on the market. Their stuff is in storage waiting for probate. I went
through the crates. The people I talked to didn't know the Jacobis very well.
The one thing they always mentioned was how affectionate the Jacobis were to
each other. Always patting. Nothing left of them now but five pallet loads of
stuff in a warehouse. I wish I had-"
"Quit
wishing, you're on it now."
"What
about the mark on the tree?"
"'You
hit it on the head'? Means nothing to me," Crawford said. "The Red
Dragon either. Beverly knows Mah-Jongg. She's sharp, and she can't see it. We
know from his hair he's not Chinese."
"He
cut the limb with a bolt cutter. I don't see-"
Crawford's
telephone rang. He spoke into it briefly.
"Lab's
ready on the note, Will. Let's go up to Zeller's office. It's bigger and not so
gray."
Lloyd
Bowman, dry as a document in spite of the heat, caught up with them in the
corridor. He was flapping damp photographs in each hand and held a sheaf of
Datafax sheets under his arm. "Jack, I have to be in court at
four-fifteen," he said as he flapped ahead. "It's that paper hanger
Nilton Eskew and his sweetheart, Nan. She could draw a Treasury note freehand.
They've been driving me crazy for two years making their own traveler's checks
on a color Xerox. Won't leave home without them. Will I make it in time, or
should I call the prosecutor?"
"You'll
make it," Crawford said. "Here we are."
Beverly
Katz smiled at Graham from the couch in Zeller's office, making up for the
scowl of Price beside her.
Scientific
Analysis Section Chief Brian Zeller was young for his job, but already his hair
was thinning and he wore bifocals. On the shelf behind Zeller's desk Graham saw
H. J. Walls's forensic science text, Tedeschi's great Forensic
Medicine in three volumes, and an antique edition of Hopkins' The
Wreck of the Deutschland.
"Will,
we met once at GWU I think," he said. "Do you know everybody? . . .
Fine."
Crawford
leaned against the corner of Zeller's desk, his arans folded. "Anybody got
a blockbuster? Okay, does anything you found indicate the note did not come
from the Tooth Fairy?"
"No,"
Bowman said. "I talked to Chicago a few minutes ago to give them some
numerals I picked up from an impression on the back of the note. Six-six-six.
I'll show you when we get to it. Chicago has over two hundred personal ads so
far." He handed Graham a sheaf of Datafax copies. "I've read them and
they're all the usual stuff -marriage offers, appeals to runaways. I'm not sure
how we'd recognize the ad if it's here."
Crawford
shook his head. "I don't know either. Let's break down the physical. Now,
Jimmy Price did everything we could do and there was no print. What about you,
Bev?"
"I
got one whisker. Scale count and core size match samples from Hannibal Lecter.
So does color. The color's markedly different from samples taken in Birmingham
and Atlanta. Three blue grains and some dark flecks went to Brian's end."
She raised her eyebrows at Brian Zeller.
"The
grains were commercial granulated cleaner with chlorine," he said.
"It must have come off the cleaning man's hands. There were several very
minute particles of dried blood. It's definitely blood, but there's not enough
to type."
"The
tears at the end of the pieces wandered off the perforations," Beverly
Katz continued. "If we find the roll in somebody's possession and he
hasn't torn it again, we can get a definite match. I recommend issuing an
advisory now, so the arresting officers will be sure to search for the
roll."
Crawford
nodded. "Bowman?"
"Sharon
from my office went after the paper and got samples to match. It's toilet
tissue for marine heads and motor homes. The texture matches brand name
Wedeker manufactured in Minneapolis. It has nationwide distribution."
Bowman
set up his photographs on an easel near the windows. His voice was surprisingly
deep for his slight stature, and his bow tie moved slightly when he talked.
"On the handwriting itself, this is a right-handed person using his left
hand and printing in a deliberate block pattern. You can see the unsteadiness
in the strokes and varying letter sizes.
"The
proportions make me think our man has a touch of uncorrected astigmatism.
"The
inks on both pieces of the note look like the same standard ball-point royal
blue in natural light, but a slight difference appears under colored filters.
He used two pens, changing somewhere in the missing section of the note. You
can see where the first one began to skip. The first pen is not used frequently
- see the blob it starts with? It might have been stored point-down and
uncapped in a pencil jar or canister, which suggests a desk situation. Also the
surface the paper lay on was soft enough to be a blotter. A blotter might
retain impressions if you find it. I want to add the blotter to Beverly's advisory."
Bowman
flipped to a photograph of the back of the note. The extreme enlargement made
the paper look fuzzy. It was grooved with shadowed impressions. "He folded
the note to write the bottom part, including what was later torn out. In this
enlargement of the back side, oblique light reveals a few impressions. We can
make out '666 an.' Maybe that's where he had pen trouble and had to bear down
and overwrite. I didn't spot it until I had this high-contrast print. There's
no 666 in any ad so far.
"The
sentence structure is orderly, and there's no rambling. The folds suggest it
was delivered in a standard letter-size envelope. These two dark places are
printing-ink smudges. The note was probably folded inside some innocuous
printed matter in the envelope.
"That's
about it," Bowman said. "Unless you have questions, Jack, I'd better
go to the courthouse. I'll check in after I testify."
"Sink
'em deep," Crawford said.
Graham
studied the Tattler personals column.
("Attractive queen-size lady, young 52, seeks
Christian Leo nonsmoker 40 - 70. No children please. Artificial limb welcomed.
No phonies. Send photo first letter.")
Lost
in the pain and desperation of the ads, he didn't notice that the others were
leaving until Beverly Katz spoke to him.
"I'm
sorry, Beverly. What did you say?" He looked at her bright eyes and
kindly, well-worn face.
"I
just said I'm glad to see you back, Champ. You're looking good."
"Thanks,
Beverly."
"Saul's
going to cooking school. He's still hit-or-miss, but when the dust settles come
over and let him practice on you."
"I'll
do it."
Zeller
went away to prowl his laboratory. Only Crawford and Graham were left, looking
at the clock.
"Forty
minutes to Tattler press time," Crawford
said. "I'm going after their mail. What do you say?"
"I
think you have to."
Crawford
passed the word to Chicago on Zeller's telephone. "Will, we need to be
ready with a substitute ad if Chicago bingoes."
"I'll
work on it."
"I'll
set up the drop." Crawford called the Secret Service and talked at some
length. Graham was still scribbling when he finished.
"Okay,
the mail drop's a beauty," Crawford said at last. "It's an outside
message box on a fire-extinguisher-service outfit in Annapolis. That's Lecter
territory. The Tooth Fairy will see that it's something Lecter could know about
Alphabetical pigeonholes. The service peopIe drive up to it and get assignments
and mail. Our boy can check it out from a park across the street. Secret
Service swears it looks good. They set it up to catch a counterfeiter, but it
turned out they didn't need it. Here's the address. What about the
message?"
"We
have to use two messages in the same edition. The first one warns the Tooth
Fairy that his enemies are closer than he thinks. It tells him he made a bad
mistake in Atlanta and if he repeats the mistake he's doomed. It tells him
Lecter has mailed 'secret information' I showed Lecter about what we're doing,
how close we are, the leads we have. It directs the Tooth Fairy to a second
message that begins with 'your signature.'
"The
second message begins 'Avid Fan . . .' and contains the address of the mail
drop. We have to do it that way. Even in roundabout language, the warning in
the first message is going to excite some casual nuts. If they can't find out
the address, they can't come to the drop and screw things up."
"Good.
Damn good. Want to wait it out in my office?"
"I'd
rather be doing something. I need to see Brian Zeller."
"Go
ahead, I can get you in a hurry if I have to." Graham found the section
chief in Serology.
"Brian,
could you show me a couple of things?"
"Sure,
what?"
"The
samples you used to type the Tooth Fairy."
Zeller
looked at Graham through the close-range section of his bifocals. "Was
there something in the report you didn't understand?"
"No."
"Was
something unclear?"
"No."
"Something
incomplete?" Zeller
mouthed the word as if it had an unpleasant taste.
"Your report was fine, couldn't ask for better.
I just want to hold the evidence in my hand."
"Ah, certainly.
We can do that." Zeller believed that all field men retain the
superstitions of the hunt. He was glad to humor Graham. "It's all together
down at that end."
Graham followed him between the long counters of
apparatus. "You're reading Tedeschi."
"Yes," Zeller said over his shoulder.
"We don't do any forensic medicine here, as you know, but Tedeschi has a
lot of useful things in there. Graham. Will Graham. You wrote the standard
monograph on determining time of death by insect activity, didn't you. Or do I
have the right Graham?"
"I
did it." A pause. "You're right, Mant and Nuorteva in the Tedeschi
are better on insects."
Zeller
was surprised to hear his thought spoken. "Well, it does have more
pictures and a table of invasion waves. No offense."
"Of
course not. They're better. I told them so."
Zeller
gathered vials and slides from a cabinet and a refrigerator and set them on the
laboratory counter. "If you want to ask me anything, I'll be where you
found me. The stage light on this microscope is on the side here."
Graham
did not want the microscope. He doubted none of Zeller's findings. He didn't
know what he wanted. He raised the vials and slides to the light, and a glassine
envelope with two blond hairs found in Birmingham. A second envelope held three
hairs found on Mrs. Leeds.
There were spit and hair and semen on the table in
front of Graham and empty air where he tried to see an image, a face, something
to replace the shapeless dread he carried.
A woman's voice came from a speaker in the ceiling.
"Graham, Will Graham, to Special Agent Crawford's office. On Red."
He
found Sarah in her headset typing, with Crawford looking over her shoulder.
"Chicago's
got an ad order with 666 in it," Crawford said out of the side of his
mouth. "They're dictating it to Sarah now. They said part of it looks like
code."
The
lines were climbing out of Sarah's typewriter.
Deer Pilgrim,
You honor me . . .
"That's it. That's it,"
Graham said. "Lecter called him a pilgrim when he was talking to me."
You’re very beautiful . . .
“Christ,” Crawford said.
I offer 100 prayers for your safety.
Find help in John 6:22, 8:16, 9:1; Luke 1:7, 3:1; Galatians 6:11, 15:2;
Acis 3:3; Revelation 18:7; Jonah 6:8 . . .
The
typing slowed as Sarah read back each pair of numbers to the agent in Chicago.
When she had finished, the list of scriptural references covered a quarter of
a page. It was signed “Bless you, 666.”
“That’s
it,” Sarah said.
Crawford
picked up the phone. “Okay, Chester, how did it go down with the ad manager? .
. . No, you did right . . . A complete clam, right. Stand by at that phone,
I’ll get back to you.”
“Code,”
Graham said.
“Has
to be. We’ve got twenty-two minutes to get a message in if we can break it.
Shop foreman needs ten minutes’ notice and three hundred dollars to shoehorn
one in this edition. Bowman’s in his office, he got a recess. If you’ll get him
cracking, I’ll talk to Cryptography at Langley. Sarah, shoot a telex of the ad
to CIA cryptography section. I’ll tell ‘em it’s coming.”
Bowman
put the message on his desk and aligned it precisely with the corners of his
blotter. He polished his rimless spectacles for what seemed to Graham a very
long time.
Bowman
had a reputation for being quick. Even the explosives section forgave him for
not being an ex-Marine and granted him that.
“We
have twenty minutes,” Graham said.
“I
understand. You called Langley?”
“Crawford
did.”
Bowman
read the message many times, looked at it upside down and sideways, ran down
the margins with his finger. He took a Bible from his shelves. For five minutes
the only sounds were the two men breathing and the crackle of onionskin pages.
“No,”
he said. “We won’t make it in time. Better use what’s left for whatever else
you can do.”
Graham
showed him an empty hand.
Bowman
swiveled around to face Graham and took off his glasses. He had a pink spot on
each side of his nose. “Do you feel fairly confident the note to Lecter is the
only communication he’s had ftom your Tooth Fairy?”
“Right.”
“The
code is something simple then. They only needed cover against casual readers.
Measuring by the perforations in the note to Lecter only about three inches is
missing. That’s not much room for instructions. The numbers aren’t right for a
jailhouse alphabet grid – the tap code. I’m guessing it’s a book code.”
Crawford
joined them. “Book code?”
“Looks
like it. The first numeral, that ‘100 prayers,’
could be the page number. The paired numbers in the scriptural references could
be line and letter. But what book?”
“Not
the Bible?” Crawford said.
“No,
not the Bible. I thought it might be at first. Galatians 6:11 threw me off. ‘Ye
see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.’ That’s
appropriate, but it’s coincidence because next he has Galatians 15:2.
Galatians has only six chapters. Same with Jonah 6:8 – Jonah
has four chapters. He wasn’t using a Bible.”
“Maybe
the book title could be concealed in the clear part of Lecter’s message,”
Crawford said.
Bowman
shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then
the Tooth Fairy named the book to use. He specified it in his note to Lecter,”
Graham said.
“It
would appear so,” Bowman said. “What about sweating Lecter? In a mental
hospital I would think drugs-“
“They
tried sodium amytal on him three years ago trying to find out where he buried a
Princeton student,” Graham said. “He gave them a recipe for dip. Besides, if we
sweat him we lose the connection. If the Tooth Fairy picked the book, it’s
something he knew Lecter would have in his cell.”
“I
know for sure he didn’t order one or borrow one from Chilton,” Crawford said.
“What
have the papers carried about that, Jack? About Lecter’s books.”
“That
he has medical books, psychology books, cookbooks.”
“Then
it could be one of the standards in those areas, something so basic the Tooth
Fairy knew Lecter would definitely have it,” Bowman said. “We need a list of
Lecter’s books. Do you have one?”
“No.”
Graham stared at his shoes. “I could get Chilton . . . Wait. Rankin and Willingham,
when they tossed his cell, they took Polaroids so they could get everything
back in place.”
“Would
you ask them to meet me with the pictures of the books?” Bowman said, packing
his briefcase.
“Where?”
“The
Library of Congress.”
Crawford
checked with the CIA cryptography section one last time. The computer at
Langley was trying consistent and progressive number-letter substitutions and a
staggering variety of alphabet grids. No progress. The cryptographer agreed
with Bowman that it was probably a book code.
Crawford
looked at his watch. “Will, we’re left with three choices and we’ve got to
decide right now. We can pull Lecter’s message out of the paper and run
nothing. We can substitute our messages in plain language, inviting the Tooth
Fairy to the mail drop. Or we can let Lecter’s ad run as is.”
“Are
you sure we can still get Lecter’s message out of the Tattler?”
“Chester
thinks the shop foreman would chisel it for about five hundred dollars.”
“I
hate to put in a plain-language message, Jack. Lecter would probably never hear
from him again.”
“Yeah,
but I’m leery of letting Lecter’s message run without knowing what it says,”
Crawford said. “What could Lecter tell him that he doesn’t know already? If he
found out we have a partial thumbprint and his prints aren’t on file anywhere,
he could whittle his thumb and pull his teeth and give us a big gummy laugh in
court.”
“The
thumbprint wasn’t in the case summary Lecter saw. We better let Lecter’s
message run. At least it’ll encourage the Tooth Fairy to contact him again.”
“What
if it encourages him to do something besides write?”
“We’ll
feel sick for a long time,” Graham said. “We have to do it.”
# # #
Fifteen
minutes later in Chicago the Tattler's big
presses rolled, gathering speed until their thunder raised the dust in the
pressroom. The FBI agent waiting in the smell of ink and hot newsprint took one
of the first ones.
The
cover lines included "Head Transplant!" and "Astronomers Glimpse
God!"
The
agent checked to see that Lecter's personal ad was in place and slipped the
paper into an express pouch for Washington. He would see that paper again and
remember his thumb smudge on the front page, but it would be years later, when
he took his children through the special exhibits on a tour of FBI headquarters.
In the hour before dawn Crawford
woke from a deep sleep. He saw the room dark, felt his wife's ample bottom
comfortably settled against the small of his back. He did not know why he had
awakened until the telephone rang a second time. He found it with no fumbling.
"Jack, this is Lloyd Bowman.
I solved the code. You need to know what it says right now."
"Okay, Lloyd."
Crawford's feet searched for his slippers.
"It says: Graham home
Marathon, Florida. Save yourself. Kill them all."
"Goddammit. Gotta go."
"I know."
Crawford went to his den without
stopping for his robe. He called Florida twice, the airport once, then called
Graham at his hotel.
"Will, Bowman just broke the
code."
"What did it say?"
"I'll tell you in a second.
Now listen to me. Everything is okay. I've taken care of it, so stay on the
phone when I tell you."
"Tell me now."
"It's your home address.
Lecter gave the bastard your home address. Wait, Will. Sheriff's
department has two cars on the way to Sugarloaf right now. Customs launch from
Marathon is taking the ocean side. The Tooth Fairy couldn't have done anything
in this short time. Hold on. You can move faster with me helping you. Now,
listen to this.
"The deputies aren't going
to scare Molly. The sheriff's cars are just closing the road to the house. Two
deputies will move up close enough to watch the house. You can call her when
she wakes up. I'll pick you up in half an hour."
"I won't be here."
"The next plane in that
direction doesn't go until eight. It'll be quicker to bring them up here. My
brother's house on the Chesapeake is available to them. I've got a good plan,
Will, wait and hear it. If you don't like it I'll put you on the plane
myself."
"I need some things from the
armory.
"We'll get it soon as I pick
you up."
# # #
Molly and Willy were among the
first off the plane at National Airport in Washington. She spotted Graham in
the crowd, did not smile, but turned to Willy and said something as they walked
swiftly ahead of the stream of tourists returning from Florida.
She looked Graham up and down and
came to him with a light kiss. Her brown fingers were cold on his cheek.
Graham felt the boy watching.
Willy shook hands from a full arm's length away.
Graham made a joke about the weight
of Molly's suitcase as they walked to the car.
"I'll carry it," Willy
said.
A brown Chevrolet with Maryland
plates moved in behind them as they pulled out of the parking lot.
Graham crossed the bridge at
Mington and pointed out the LincoIn and Jefferson memorials and the Washington
Monument before heading east toward the Chesapeake Bay. Ten miles outside
Washington the brown Chevrolet pulled up beside them in the inside lane. The
driver looked across with his hand to his mouth and a voice from nowhere
crackled in the car.
"Fox Edward, you're clean as
a whistle. Have a nice trip."
Graham reached under the dash for
the concealed microphone. "Roger, Bobby. Much obliged."
The Chevrolet dropped behind them
and its turn signal came on. "Just making sure no press cars or anything
were following," Graham said.
"I see," Molly said.
They stopped in the late
afternoon and ate crabs at a roadside restaurant. Willy went to look at the
lobster tank.
"I hate it, Molly. I'm
sorry," Graham said.
"Is he after you now?"
"We've had no reason to
think so. Lecter just suggested it to him, urged him to do it."
"It's a clammy, sick
feeling."
"I know it is. You and Willy
are safe at Crawford's brother's house. Nobody in the world knows you're there
but me and Crawford."
"I'd just as soon not talk
about Crawford."
"It's a nice place, you'll
see."
She took a deep breath and when
she let it out the anger seemed to go with it, leaving her tired and calm. She
gave him a crooked smile. "Hell, I just got mad there for a while. Do we
have to put up with any Crawfords?"
"Nope." He moved the
cracker basket to take her hand. "How much does Willy know?"
"Plenty. His buddy Tommy's
mother had a trash newspaper from the supermarket at their house. Tommy showed
it to Willy. It had a lot of stuff about you, apparently pretty distorted.
About Hobbs, the place you were after that, Lecter, everything. It upset him. I
asked him if he wanted to talk about it. He just asked me if I knew it all
along. I said yes, that you and I talked about it once, that you told me
everything before we got married. I asked him if he wanted me to tell him about
it, the way it really was. He said he'd ask you to your face."
"Damn good. Good for him.
What was it, the Tattler?"
"I don't know, I think
so."
"Thanks a lot, Freddy."
A swell of anger at Freddy Lounds lifted him from his seat. He washed his face
with cold water in the rest room.
# # #
Sarah was saying good night to
Crawford in the office when the telephone rang. She put down her purse and
umbrella to answer it.
"Special Agent Crawford's
office . . . No, Mr. Graham is not in the office, but let me . .
. Wait, I'll be glad to . . . Yes, he'll be in tomorrow afternoon, but
let me. . ."
The tone of her voice brought
Crawford around his desk.
She held the receiver as though
it had died in her hand. "He asked for Will and said he might call back
tomorrow afternoon. I tried to hold him."
"Who?"
"He said, 'Just tell Graham
it's the Pilgrim.' That's what Dr. Lecter called-"
"The Tooth Fairy,"
Crawford said.
# # #
Graham went to the grocery store
while Molly and Willy unpacked. He found canary melons at the market and a ripe
cranshaw. He parked across the street from the house and sat for a few minutes,
still gripping the wheel. He was ashamed that because of him Molly was rooted
out of the house she loved and put among strangers.
Crawford had done his best. This
was no faceless federal safe house with chair arms bleached by palm sweat. It
was a pleasant cottage, freshly whitewashed, with impatiens blooming around the
steps. It was the product of careful hands and a sense of order. The rear yard
sloped down to the Chesapeake Bay and there was a swim- ming raft.
Blue-green television light
pulsed behind the curtains. Molly and Willy were watching baseball, Graham
knew.
Willy's father had been a
baseball player, and a good one. He and Molly met on the school bus, married in
college.
They trooped around the Florida
State League while he was in the Cardinals' farm system. They took Willy with
them and had a terrific time. Spam and spirit. He got a tryout with the
Cardinals and hit safely in his first two games. Then he began to have
difficulty swallowing. The surgeon tried to get it all, but it metastasized and
ate him up. He died five months later, when Willy was six.
Willy still watched baseball
whenever he could. Molly watched baseball when she was upset.
Graham had no key. He knocked.
"I'll get it." Willy's
voice.
"Wait." Molly's face
between the curtains. "All right."
Willy opened the door. In his
fist, held close to his leg, was a fish billy.
Graham's eyes stung at the sight.
The boy must have brought it in his suitcase.
Molly took the bag from him.
"Want some coffee? There's gin, but not the kind you like."
When she was in the kitchen,
Willy asked Graham to come outside.
From the back porch they could
see the riding lights of boats anchored in the bay.
"Will, is there any stuff I
need to know to see about Mom?"
"You're both safe here,
Willy. Remember the car that followed us from the airport making sure nobody
saw where we went? Nobody can find out where you and your mother are."
"This crazy guy wants to
kill you, does he?"
"We don't know that. I just
didn't feel easy with him knowing where the house is."
"You gonna kill him?"
Graham closed his eyes for a
moment. "No. It's just my job to find him. They'll put him in a mental
hospital so they can treat him and keep him from hurting anybody."
"Tommy's mother had this
little newspaper, Will. It said you killed a guy in Minnesota and you were in a
mental hospital. I never knew that. Is it true?"
"Yes."
"I started to ask Mom, but I
figured I'd ask you."
"I appreciate your asking me
straight out. It wasn't just a mental hospital; they treat everything."
The distinction seemed important. "I was in the psychiatric wing. It
bothers you, finding out I was in there. Because I'm married to your mom.
"I told my dad I'd take care
of her. I'll do it, too."
Graham felt he had to tell Willy
enough. He didn't want to tell him too much.
The lights went out in the
kitchen. He could see Molly's dim outline inside the screen door and he felt
the weight of her judgment. Dealing with Willy he was handling her heart.
Willy clearly did not know what
to ask next. Graham did it for him.
"The hospital part was after
the business with Hobbs."
"You shot him?"
"Yes."
"How'd it happen?"
"To begin with, Garrett
Hobbs was insane. He was attacking college girls and he - . . . killed
them."
"How?"
"With a knife; anyway I
found a little curly piece of metal in the clothes one of the girls had on. It
was the kind of shred a pipe threader makes - remember when we fixed the shower
outside?
"I was taking a look at a
lot of steamfitters, plumbers and people. lt took a long time. Hobbs had left
this resignation letter at a construction job I was checking. I saw it and it
was . . . peculiar. He wasn't working anywhere, and I had to find him at home.
"I was going up the stairs
in Hobbs's apartment house. A uniformed officer was with me. Hobbs must have
seen us coming. I was halfway up to his landing when he shoved his wife out the
door and she came falling down the stairs dead."
"He had killed her?"
"Yeah. So I asked the
officer I was with to call for SWAT, to get some help. But then I could hear
kids in there and some screaming. I wanted to wait, but I couldn't."
"You went in the
apartment?"
"I did. Hobbs had caught
this girl from behind and he had a knife. He was cutting her with it. And I
shot him."
"Did the girl die?"
"No."
"She got all right?"
"After a while, yes. She's
all right now.
Willy digested this silently.
Faint music came from an anchored sailboat.
Graham could leave things out for
Willy, but he couldn't help seeing them again himself.
He left out Mrs. Hobbs on the
landing clutching at him, stabbed so many times. Seeing she was gone, hearing
the screaming from the apartment, prying the slick red fingers off and cracking
his shoulder before the door gave in. Hobbs holding his own daughter busy
cutting her neck when he could get to it, her struggling with her chin tucked
down, the .38 knocking chunks out of him and he still cutting and he wouldn't
go down. Hobbs sitting on the floor crying and the girl rasping. Holding her
down and seeing Hobbs had gotten through the windpipe, but not the arteries.
The daughter looked at him with wide glazed eyes and at her father sitting on
the floor crying "See? See?" until he fell over dead.
That was where Graham lost his
faith in .38's.
"Willy, the business with
Hobbs, it bothered me a lot. You know, I kept it on my mind and I saw it over
and over. I got so I couldn't think about much else. I kept thinking there must
be some way I could have handled it better. And then I quit feeling anything. I
couldn't eat and I stopped talking to anybody. I got really depressed. So a
doctor asked me to go into the hospital, and I did. After a while I got some
distance on it. The girl that got hurt in Hobbs's apartment came to see me. She
was okay and we talked a lot. Finally I put it aside and went back to
work."
"Killing somebody, even if
you have to do it, it feels that bad?"
"Willy, it's one of the
ugliest things in the world."
"Say, I'm going in the
kitchen for a minute. You want something, a Coke?" Willy liked to bring
Graham things, but he always made it a casual adjunct to something he was going
to do anyway. No special trip or anything.
"Sure, a Coke."
"Mom ought to come out and
look at the lights."
# # #
Late in the night Graham and
Molly sat in the back-porch swing. Light rain fell and the boat lights cast
grainy halos on the mist. The breeze off the bay raised goose bumps on their
arms.
"This could take a while,
couldn't it?" Molly said.
"I hope it won't, but it
might."
"Will, Evelyn said she could
keep the shop for this week and four days next week. But I've got to go back to
Marathon, at least for a day or two when my buyers come. I could stay with
Evelyn and Sam. I should go to market in Atlanta myself. I need to be ready for
September."
"Does Evelyn know where you
are?"
"I just told her
Washington."
"Good."
"It's hard to have anything,
isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery
planet."
"Slick as hell."
"We'll be back in Sugarloaf,
won't we?"
"Yes we will."
"Don't get in a hurry and
hang it out too far. You won't do that?"
"No."
"Are you going back
early?"
He had talked to Crawford half an
hour on the phone.
"A little before lunch. If
you're going to Marathon at all, there's something we need to tend to in the
morning. Willy can fish."
"He had to ask you about the
other."
"I know, I don't blame
him."
"Damn that reporter, what's
his name?"
"Lounds. Freddy
Lounds."
"I think maybe you hate him.
And I wish I hadn't brought it up. Let's go to bed and I'll rub your
back."
Resentment raised a minute
blister in Graham. He had justified himself to an eleven-year-old. The kid said
it was okay that he had been in the rubber Ramada. Now she was going to rub his
back. Let's go to bed - it's okay with Willy.
When you feel strain, keep your
mouth shut if you can.
"If you want to think
awhile, I'll let you alone," she said.
He didn't want to think. He
definitely did not. "You rub my back and I'll rub your front," he
said.
"Go to it, Buster."
# # #
Winds aloft carried the thin rain
out over the bay and by nine A.M. the ground steamed. The far targets on the
sheriff's department range seemed to flinch in the wavy air.
The rangemaster watched through
his binoculars until he was sure the man and woman at the far end of the firing
line were observing the safety rules.
The Justice Department
credentials the man showed when he asked to use the range said
"Investigator." That could be anything. The rangemaster did not
approve of anyone other than a qualified instructor teaching pistolcraft.
Still, he had to admit the fed
knew what he was doing.
They were only using a
.22-caliber revolver but he was teaching the woman combat shooting from the
Weaver stance, left foot slightly forward, a good two-handed grip on the
revolver with isometric tension in the arms. She was firing at the silhouette
target seven yards in front of her. Again and again she brought the weapon up
from the outside pocket of her shoulderbag. It went on until the rangemaster
was bored with it.
A change in the sound brought the
rangemaster's glasses up again. They had the earmuffs on now and she was
working with a short, chunky revolver. The rangemaster recognized the pop of the
light target loads.
He could see the pistol extended
in her hands and it interested him. He strolled along the firing line and stood
a few yards behind them.
He wanted to examine the pistol,
but this was not a good time to interrupt. He got a good look at it as she
shucked out the empties and popped in five from a speedloader.
Odd arm for a fed. It was a
Bulldog .44 Special, short and ugly with its startling big bore. It had been
extensively modified by Mag Na Port. The barrel was vented near the muzzle to
help keep the muzzle down on recoil, the hammer was bobbed and it had a good
set of fat grips. He suspected it was throated for the speedloader. One hell of
a mean pistol when it was loaded with what the fed had waiting. He wondered how
the woman would stand up to it.
The ammunition on the stand
beside them was an interesting progression. First there was a box of lightly
loaded wadcutters. Then came regular service hardball, and last was something
the range-master had read much about but had rarely seen. A row of Glaser
Safety Slugs. The tips looked like pencil erasers. Behind each tip was a copper
jacket containing number-twelve shot suspended in liquid Teflon.
The light projectile was designed
to fly at tremendous velocity, smash into the target and release the shot. In
meat the results were devastating. The rangemaster even recalled the figures.
Ninety Glasers had been fired at men so far. All ninety were instant one-shot
stops. In eighty-nine of the cases immediate death resulted. One man survived,
surprising the doctors. The Glaser round had a safety advantage, too - no
ricochets, and it would not go through a wall and kill someone in the next
room.
The man was very gentle with her
and encouraging, but he seemed sad about something.
The woman had worked up to the
full service loads now and the rangemaster was pleased to see she handled the
recoil very well, both eyes open and no flinch. True, it took her maybe four
seconds to get the first one off, coming up from the bag, but three were in the
X ring. Not bad for a beginner. She had some talent.
He had been back in the tower for
some time when he heard the hellish racket of the Glasers going off.
She was pumping all five. It was
not standard federal practice. The rangemaster wondered what in God's name they
saw in the silhouette that it would take five Glasers to kill.
Graham came to the tower to turn
in the earmuffs, leaving his pupil sitting on a bench, head down, her elbows on
her knees.
The rangemaster thought he should
be pleased with her, and told him so. She had come a long way in one day.
Graham thanked him absently. His expression puzzled the rangemaster. He looked
like a man who had witnessed an irrevocable loss.
The caller, "Mr.
Pilgrim," had said to Sarah that he might call again on the following
afternoon. At FBI headquarters certain arrangements were made to receive the
call.
Who was Mr. Pilgrim? Not Lecter -
Crawford had made sure of that. Was Mr. Pilgrim the Tooth Fairy? Maybe so,
Crawford thought.
The desks and telephones from
Crawford's office had been moved overnight to a larger room across the hall.
Graham stood in the open doorway
of a soundproof booth. Behind him in the booth was Crawford's telephone. Sarah
had cleaned it with Windex. With the voiceprint spectrograph, tape recorders,
and stress evaluator taking up most of her desk and another table beside it,
and Beverly Katz sitting in her chair, Sarah needed something to do.
The big clock on the wall showed
ten minutes before noon.
Dr. Alan Bloom and Crawford stood
with Graham. They had adopted a sidelines stance, hands in their pockets.
A technician seated across from
Beverly Katz drummed his fingers on the desk until a frown from Crawford
stopped him.
Crawford's desk was cluttered with
two new telephones, an open line to the Bell System's electronic switching
center (ESS) and a hot line to the FBI communications room.
"How much time do you need
for a trace?" Dr. Bloom asked.
"With the new switching it's
a lot quicker than most people think," Crawford said. "Maybe a minute
if it comes through all-electronic switching. More if it's from someplace where
they have to swarm the frame."
Crawford raised his voice to the
room. "If he calls at all, it'll be short, so let's play him perfect. Want
to go over the drill, Will?"
"Sure. When we get to the
point where I talk, I want to ask you a couple of things, Doctor."
Bloom had arrived after the
others. He was scheduled to speak to the behavioral-science section at Quantico
later in the day. Bloom could smell cordite on Graham's clothes.
"Okay," Graham said.
"The phone rings. The circuit's completed immediately and the trace starts
at ESS, but the tone generator continues the ringing noise so he doesn't know
we've picked up. That gives us about twenty seconds on him." He pointed to
the technician. "Tone generator to 'off' at the end of the fourth ring,
got it?"
The technician nodded. "End
of the fourth ring."
"Now, Beverly picks up the
phone. Her voice is different from the one he heard yesterday. No recognition
in the voice. Beverly sounds bored. He asks for me. Bev says, 'I'll have to
page him, may I put you on hold?' Ready with that, Bev?" Graham thought it
would be better not to rehearse the lines. They might sound flat by rote.
"All right, the line is open
to us, dead to him. I think he'll hold longer than he'll talk."
"Sure you don't want to give
him the hold music?" the technician asked.
"Hell no," Crawford
said.
"We give him about twenty
seconds of hold, then Beverly comes back on and tells him, 'Mr. Graham's coming
to the phone, I'll connect you now.' I pick up." Graham turned to Dr.
Bloom. "How would you play him, Doctor?"
"He'll expect you to be
skeptical about it really being him. I'd give him some polite skepticism. I'd
make a strong distinction between the nuisance of fake callers and the
significance, the importance, of a call from the real person. The fakes are
easy to recognize because they lack the capacity to uoderstand what has
happened, that sort of thing.
"Make him tell something to prove
who he is." Dr. Bloom looked at the floor and kneaded the back of his
neck.
"You don't know what he
wants. Maybe he wants understanding, maybe he's fixed on you as the adversary
and wants to gloat - we'll see. Try to pick up his mood and give him what he's
after, a little at a time. I'd be very leery of appealing to him to come to us
for help, unless you sense he's asking for that.
"If he's paranoid you'll
pick it up fast. In that case I'd play into his suspicion or grievance. Let him
air it. If he gets rolling on that, he may forget how long he's talked. That's
all I know to tell you." Bloom put his hand on Graham's shoulder and spoke
quietly. "Listen, this is not a pep talk or any bullshit; you can take him
over the jumps. Never mind advice, do what seems right to you."
Waiting. Half an hour of silence
was enough.
"Call or no call, we've got
to decide where to go from here," Crawford said. "Want to try the
mail drop?"
"I can't see anything
better," Graham said.
"That would give us two
baits, a stakeout at your house in the Keys and the drop."
The telephone was ringing.
Tone generator on. At ESS the
trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch and Beverly picked up.
Sarah was listening.
"Special Agent Crawford's
office."
Sarah shook her head. She knew
the caller, one of Crawford's cronies at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Beverly got him off in a hurry and stopped the trace. Everyone in the FBI
building knew to keep the line clear.
Crawford went over the details of
the mail drop again. They were bored and tense at the same time. Lloyd Bowman
came around to show them how the number pairs in Lecter's Scriptures fit page
100 of the softcover Joy of Cooking. Sarah passed around coffee in paper
cups.
The telephone was ringing.
The tone generator took over and
at ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch. Beverly
picked up.
"Special Agent Crawford's
office."
Sarah was nodding her head. Big
nods.
Graham went into his booth and
closed the door. He could see Beverly's lips moving. She punched
"Hold" and watched the second hand on the wall clock.
Graham could see his face in the
polished receiver. Two bloated faces in the earpiece and mouthpiece. He could
smell cordite from the firing range in his shirt. Don't hang up. Sweet Jesus,
don't hang up. Forty seconds had elapsed. The telephone moved slightly on his
table when it rang. Let it ring. Once more. Forty-five seconds. Now. "This
is Will Graham, can I help you?"
Low laughter. A muffled voice:
"I expect you can."
"Could I ask who's calling
please?"
"Didn't your secretary tell
you?"
"No, but she did call me out
of a meeting, sir, and-"
"If you tell me you won't
talk to Mr. Pilgrim, I'll hang up right now. Yes or no?"
"Mr. Pilgrim, if you have
some problem I'm equipped to deal with, I'll be glad to talk with you."
"I think you have the
problem, Mr. Graham."
"I'm sorry, I didn't
understand you."
The second hand crawled toward
one minute.
"You've been a busy boy,
haven't you?" the caller said.
"Too busy to stay on the
phone unless you state your business."
"My business is in the same
place yours is. Atlanta and Birmingham."
"Do you know something about
that?"
Soft laughter. "Know
something about it? Are you interested in Mr. Pilgrim? Yes or no. I'll hang up
if you lie."
Graham could see Crawford through
the glass. He had a telephone receiver in each hand.
"Yes. But, see, I get a lot
of calls, and most of them are from peopIe who say they know things." One
minute.
Crawford put one receiver down
and scrawled on a piece of paper. "You'd be surprised how many pretenders
there are," Graham said. "Talk to them a few minutes and you can tell
they don't have the capacity to even understand what's going on. Do you?"
Sarah held a sheet of paper to
the glass for Graham to see. It said, "Chicago phone booth. PD
scrambling."
"I'll tell you what, you
tell me one thing you know about Mr. Pugrim and maybe I'll tell you whether
you're right or not," the muffled voice said.
"Let's get straight who
we're talking about," Graham said.
"We're talking about Mr.
Pilgrim."
"How do I know Mr. Pilgrim
has done anything I'm interested in. Has he?"
"Let's say, yes."
"Are you Mr. Pilgrim?"
"I don't think I'll tell you
that."
"Are you his friend?"
"Sort of."
"Well, prove it then. Tell
me something that shows me how well you know him."
"You first. You show me
yours." A nervous giggle. "First time you're wrong, I hang up."
"All right, Mr. Pilgrim is
right-handed."
"That's a safe guess. Most
people are."
"Mr. Pilgrim is
misunderstood."
"No general crap,
please."
"Mr. Pilgrim is really
strong physically."
"Yes, you could say
that."
Graham looked at the clock. A
minute and a half. Crawford nodded encouragement.
Don't tell him
anything that he could change.
"Mr. Pilgrim is white and
about, say, five-feet-eleven. You haven't told me anything, you know. I'm not
so sure you even know him at all."
"Want to stop talking?"
"No, but you said we'd
trade. I was just going along with you."
"Do you think Mr. Pilgrim is
crazy?"
Bloom was shaking his head.
"I don't think anybody who
is as careful as he is could be crazy. I think he's different. I think a lot of
people do believe he's crazy, and the reason for that is, he hasn't let people
understand much about him."
"Describe exactly what you
think he did to Mrs. Leeds and maybe I'll tell you if you're right or
not."
"I don't want to do
thaL"
"Good-bye."
Graham's heart jumped, but he
could still hear breathing on the other end.
"I can't go into that until
I know-"
Graham heard the telephone-booth
door slam open in Chicago and the receiver fall with a clang. Faint voices and
bangs as the receiver swung on its cord. Everyone in the office heard it on the
speakerphone.
"Freeze. Don't even twitch.
Now lock your fingers behind your head and back out of the booth slowly.
Slowly. Hands on the glass and spread 'em."
Sweet relief was flooding Graham.
"I'm not armed, Stan. You'll
find my ID in my breast pocket. That tickles."
A confused voice loud on the
telephone. "Who am I speaking to?"
"Will Graham, FBI."
"This is Sergeant Stanley
Riddle, Chicago police department." Irritated now. "Would you tell me
what the hell's going on?"
"You tell me. You have a man
in custody?"
"Damn right. Freddy Lounds,
the reporter. I've known him for ten years . . . Here's your notebook, Freddy .
. . Are you preferring charges against him?"
Graham's face was pale.
Crawford's was red. Dr. Bloom watched the tape reels go around.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, I'm preferring
charges." Graham's voice was strangled. "Obstruction of justice.
Please take him in and hold him for the U.S attomey."
Suddenly Lounds was on the
telephone. He spoke fast and clearly with the cotton wads out of his cheeks.
"Will, listen-"
"Tell it to the U.S.
attomey. Put Sergeant Riddle on the phone."
"I know something-"
"Put Riddle on the goddamned
telephone."
Crawford's voice came on the
line. "Let me have it' Will."
Graham slammed his receiver down
with a bang that made every-one in range of the speakerphone flinch. He came
out of the booth and left the room without looking at anyone.
"Lounds, you have hubbed
hell, my man," Crawford said.
"You want to catch him or
not? I can help you. Let me talk one minute." Lounds hurried into
Crawford's silence. "Listen, you just showed me how bad you need the Tattler.
Before, I wasn't sure - now I am. That ad's part of the Tooth Fairy case or you
wouldn't have gone balls-out to nail this call. Great. The Tattler's
here for you. Anything you want."
"How did you find out?"
"The ad manager came to me.
Said your Chicago office sent this suit-of-clothes over to check the ads. Your
guy took five letters from the incoming ads. Said it was 'pursuant to mail
fraud.' Mail fraud nothing. The ad manager made Xerox copies of the letters and
envelopes before he let your guy have them.
"I looked them over. I knew
he took five letters to smokescreen the one he really wanted. Took a day or two
to check them all out. The answer was on the envelope. Chesapeake postmark. The
postage-meter number was for Chesapeake State Hospital. I was over there you
know, behind your friend with the wild hair up his ass. What else could it
be?
"I had to be sure, though.
Thats why I called to see if you'd come down on 'Mr. Pilgrim' with both feet,
and you did."
"You made a large mistake
Freddy."
"You need the Tattler
and l can open it up for you. Ads, editorial, monitoring incoming mail,
anything. You name it. I can be discreet. I can. Cut me in, Crawford."
"There's nothing to cut you
in on."
"Okay, then it won't make
any difference if somebody happened to put in six personal ads next issue. All
to 'Mr. Pilgrim' and signed the same way."
"I'll get an injunction
slapped on you and a sealed indictment for obstruction of justice." "And it might leak to every pape
in the country." Lounds knew he was talking on tape. He didn't care
anymore. "I swear to God I'll do it, Crawford. I'll tear up your chance
before I lose mine."
"Add interstate transmition
of a threatening message to what I just said."
"Let me help you, Jack. I
can, believe me."
"Run along to the police
station, Freddy. Now put the sergeant back on the phone."
# # #
Freddy Lounds's Lincoln
Versailles smelled of hair tonic and aftershave, socks and cigars, and the
police sergeant was glad to get out of it when they reached the station house.
Lounds knew the captain
commanding the precinct and many of the patrolmen. The captain gave Lounds
coffee and called the U.S. attorney's office to "try and clear this shit
up."
No federal marshal came for
Lounds. In half an hour he took a call from Crawford in the precinct
commander's office. Then he was free to go. The captain walked him to his car.
Lounds was keyed up and his
driving was fast and jerky as he crossed the Loop eastward to his apartrnent
overlooking Lake Michigan. There were several things he wanted out of this
story and he knew that he could get them. Money was one, and most of that would
come from the paperback. He would have an instant paperback on the stands
thirty-six hours after the capture. An exclusive story in the daily press would
be a news coup. He would have the satisfaction of seeing the straight press -
the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the sanctified Washington Post and
the holy New York Times - run his copyrighted material under his byline with
his picture credits.
And then the correspondents of
those august journals, who looked down on him, who would not drink with him,
could eat their fucking hearts out.
Lounds was a pariah to them
because he had taken a different faith. Had he been incompetent, a fool with no
other resource, the veterans of the straight press could have forgiven him for
working on the Tattler, as one forgives a retarded geek. But Lounds was good.
He had the qualities of a good reporter - intelligence, guts, and the good eye.
He had great energy and patience.
Against him were the fact that he
was obnoxious and therefore disliked by news executives, and his inability to
keep himself out of his stories.
In Lounds was the lunging need to
be noticed that is often miscalled ego. Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He
had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt.
He had worked in straight
journalism for ten years when he realized that no one would ever send him to
the White House. He saw that his publishers would wear his legs out, use him
until it was time for him to become a broken-down old drunk manning a dead-end
desk, drifting inevitably toward cirrhosis or a mattress fire.
They wanted the information he
could get, but they didn't want Freddy. They paid him top scale, which is not
very much money if you have to buy women. They patted his back and told him he
had a lot of balls and they refused to put his name on a parking place.
One evening in 1969 while in the
office working rewrite, Freddy had an epiphany.
Frank Larkin was seated near him
taking dictation on the telephone. Dictation was the glue factory for old
reporters on the paper where Freddy worked. Frank Larkin was fifty-five, but he
looked seventy. He was oystereyed and he went to his locker every half-hour for
a drink. Freddy could smell him from where he sat.
Larkin got up and shuffled over
to the slot and spoke in a hoarse whisper to the news editor, a woman. Freddy
always listened to other people's conversatious.
Larkin asked the woman to get him
a Kotex from the machine in the ladies' room. He had to use them on his
bleeding behind.
Freddy stopped typing. He took
the story out of his typewriter, replaced the paper and wrote a letter of
resignation.
A week later he was working for
the Tattler.
He started as cancer editor at a
salary nearly double what he had earned before. Management was impressed with
his attitude.
The Tattler could afford
to pay him well because the paper found cancer very lucrative.
One in five Americans dies of it.
The relatives of the dying, worn out, prayed out, trying to fight a raging
carcinoma with pats and banana pudding and copper-tasting jokes, are desperate
for anything hopeful.
Marketing surveys showed that a
bold "New Cure for Cancer" or "Cancer Miracle Drug" cover
line boosted supermarket sales of any Tattler issue by 22.3 percent.
There was a six-percentile drop in those sales when the story ran on page one
beneath the cover line, as the reader had time to scan the empty text while the
groceries were being totaled.
Marketing experts discovered it
was better to have the big cover line in color on the front and play the story
in the middle pages, where it was difficult to hold the paper open and manage a
purse and grocery cart at the same time.
The standard story featured an
optimistic five paragraphs in ten-point type, then a drop to eight point, then
to six point before mentioning that the "miracle drug" was
unavailable or that animal research was just beginning.
Freddy earned his money turning
them out, and the stories sold a lot of Tattlers.
In addition to increased
readership, there were many spinoff sales of miracle medallions and healing
cloths. Manufacturers of these paid a premium to get their ads located close to
the weekly cancer story.
Many readers wrote to the paper
for more information. Some additional revenue was realized by selling their
names to a radio "evangelist," a screaming sociopath who wrote to
them for money, using envelopes stamped "Someone You Love Will Die Unless
. . .”
Freddy Lounds was good for the Tattler,
and the Tattler was good to him. Now, after eleven years with the paper,
he earned $72,000 a year. He covered pretty much what he pleased and spent the
money trying to have a good time. He lived as well as he knew how to live.
The way things were developing,
he believed he could raise the ante on his paperback deal, and there was movie
interest. He had heard that Hollywood was a fine place for obnoxious fellows
with money.
Freddy felt good. He shot down
the ramp to the underground garage in his building and wheeled into his parking
place with a spirited squeal of rubber. There on the wall was his name in
letters a foot high, marking his private spot. Mr. Frederick Lounds.
Wendy was here already – her
Datsun was parked next to his space. Good. He wished he could take her to
Washington with him. That would make those flatfeet’s eyes pop. He whistled in
the elevator on his way upstairs.
# # #
Wendy was packing for him. She
had lived out of suitcases and she did a good job.
Neat in her jeans and plaid
shirt, her brown hair gathered in a chipmunk tail on her neck, she might have
been a farm girl except for her pallor and her shape. Wendy's figure was almost
a caricature of puberty.
She looked at Lounds with eyes
that had not registered surprise in years. She saw that he was trembling.
"You're working too hard,
Roscoe." She liked to call him Roscoe, and it pleased him for some reason.
"What are you taking, the six-o'clock shuttle?" She brought him a
drink and moved her sequined jump suit and wig case off the bed so he could lie
down. "I can take you to the airport. I'm not going to the club 'til
six."
"Wendy City" was her
own topless bar, and she didn't have to dance anymore. Lounds had cosigned the
note.
"You sounded like Morocco
Mole when you called me," she said.
"Who?"
"You know, on television
Saturday morning, he's real mysterious and he helps Secret Squirrel. We watched
it when you had the flu . . . You really pulled one off today, didn't you?
You're really pleased with yourself."
"Damn straight. I took a
chance today, baby, and it paid off. I've got a chance at something
sweet."
"You've got time for a nap
before you go. You're running yourself in the ground."
Lounds lit a cigarette. He
already had one burning in the ashtray.
"You know what?" she
said. "I bet if you drink your drink and get it off, you could go to
sleep."
Lounds's face, like a fist
pressed against her neck, relaxed at last, became mobile as suddenly as a fist
becomes a hand. His trembling stopped. He told her all about it, whispering
into the buck jut of her augmented breasts; she tracing eights on the back of
his neck with a finger.
"That is some kind of smart,
Roscoe," she said. "You go to sleep now. I'll get you up for the
plane. It'll be all right, all of it. And then we'll have a high old
time."
They whispered about the places
they would go. He went to sleep.
Dr. Alan Bloom and Jack Crawford
sat on folding chairs, the only furniture left in Crawford’s office.
“The cupboard is bare, Doctor.”
Dr. Bloom studied Crawford’s
simian face and wondered what was coming. Behind Crawford’s grousing and his
Alka-Seltzers the doctor saw an intelligence as cold as an X-ray table.
“Where did Will go?”
“He’ll walk around and cool off,”
Crawford said. “He hates Lounds.”
“Did you think you might lose
Will after Lecter published his home address? That he might go back to his
family?”
“For a minute, I did. It shook
him.”
“Understandably,” Dr. Bloom said.
“Then I realized – he can’t go
home, and neither can Molly and Willy, never, until the Tooth Fairy is out of
the way.”
“You’ve met Molly?”
“Yeah. She’s great, I like her.
She’d be glad to see me in hell with my back broken, of course. I’m having to
duck her right now.”
“She thinks you use Will?”
Crawford looked at Dr Bloom
sharply. “I’ve got some things I have to talk to him about. We’ll need to check
with you. When do you have to be at Quantico?”
“Not until Tuesday morning. I put
it off.” Dr. Bloom was a guest lecturer at the behavioral-science section of
the FBI Academy.
“Graham likes you. He doesn’t
think you run any mind games on him,”
Crawford said. Bloom’s remark about using Graham stuck in his craw.
“I don’t. I wouldn’t try,” Dr.
Bloom said. “I’m as honest with him as I’d be with a patient.”
“Exactly.”
“No, I want to be his friend, and
I am. Jack, I owe it to my field of study to observe. Remember, though, when
you asked me to give you a study on him, I refused.”
“That was Petersen, upstairs,
wanted the study.”
“You were the one who asked for
it. No matter, if I ever did anything on Graham, if there were ever anything
that might be of therapeutic benefit to others, I’d abstract it in a form that
would be totally unrecognizable. If I ever do anything in a scholarly way,
it’ll only be published posthumously.”
“After you or after Graham?”
Dr. Bloom didn’t answer.
“One thing I’ve noticed – I’m
curious about this: you’re never alone in a room with Graham, are you? You’re
smooth about it, but you’re never one-on-one with him. Why’s that? Do you think
he’s psychic, is that it?”
“No. He’s an eideteker –
he has a remarkable visual memory – but I don’t think he’s psychic. He wouldn’t
let Duke test him – that doesn’t mean anything, though. He hates to be prodded
and poked. So do I.”
“But-“
“Will wants to think of this as
purely an intellectual exercise, and in the narrow definition of forensics, that’s
what it is. He’s good at that, but there are other people just as good, I
imagine.”
“Not many,” Crawford said.
“What he has in addition is pure
empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or
mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an
uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.”
“Why aren’t you ever alone with
him?”
“Because I have some professional
curiosity about him and he’d pick that up in a hurry. He’s fast.”
“If he caught you peeking, he’d
snatch down the shades.”
“An unpleasant analogy, but
accurate, yes. You’ve had sufficient revenge now, Jack. We can get to the
point. Let’s make it short. I don’t feel very well.”
“A psychosomatic manifestation,
probably,” Crawford said. “Actually it’s my gall bladder. What do you want?”
“I have a medium where I can
speak to the Tooth Fairy.”
“The Tattler,” Dr. Bloom
said.
“Right. Do you think there’s any
way to push him in a self-destructive way by what we say to him?”
“Push him toward suicide?”
“Suicide would suit me fine.”
“I doubt it. In certain kinds of
mental illness that might be possible. Here, I doubt it. If he were
self-destructive, he wouldn’t be so careful. He wouldn’t protect himself so
well. If he were a classic paranoid schizophrenic, you might be able to
influence him to blow up and become visible. You might even get him to hurt
himself. I wouldn’t help you though.” Suicide was Bloom’s mortal enemy.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,”
Crawford said. “Could we enrage him?”
“Why do you want to know? To what
purpose?”
“Let me ask you this: could we
enrage him and focus his attention?”
“He’s already fixed on Graham as
his adversary, and you know it. Don’t fool around. You’ve decided to stick
Graham’s neck out, haven’t you?”
“I think I have to do it. It’s
that or he gets his feet sticky on the twenty-fifth. Help me.”
“I’m not sure you know what
you’re asking.”
“Advice – that’s what I’m
asking.”
“I don’t mean from me,” Dr. Bloom
said. “What you’re asking from Graham. I don’t want you to misinterpret this,
and normally I wouldn’t say it, but you ought to know: what do you think one of
Will’s strongest drives is?”
Crawford shook his head. “It’s
fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.” “Because he got hurt?”
“No, not entirely. Fear comes
with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.”
Crawford stared at his blunt
hands folded on his stomach. He reddened. It was embarrassing to talk about it.
“Sure. It’s what you don’t ever mention on the big boys’ side of the
playground, right? Don’t worry about telling me he’s afraid. I won’t think he’s
not a ‘stand-up guy.’ I’m not a total asshole, Doctor.”
“I never thought you were, Jack.”
“I wouldn’t put him out there if
I couldn’t cover him. Okay, if I couldn’t cover him eighty percent. He’s not
bad himself, Not the best, but he’s quick. Will you help us stir up the Tooth
Fairy, Doctor? A lot of people are dead.”
“Only if Graham knows the entire
risk ahead of time and assumes it voluntarily. I have to hear him say that.”
“I’m like you, Doctor. I never
bullshit him. No more than we all bullshit each other.”
# # #
Crawford found Graham in the
small workroom near Zeller's lab which he had commandeered and filled with
photographs and personal papers belonging to the victims.
Crawford waited until Graham put
down the Law Enforcement Bulletin he was reading.
"Let me fill you in on
what's up for the twenty-fifth," He did not have to tell Graham that the
twenty-fifth would bring the next full moon.
"When he does it
again?"
"Yeah, if we have a problem
on the twenty-fifth."
"Not if. When."
"Both times it's been on
Saturday night. Birmingham, June 28, a full moon falling on a Saturday night.
It was July 26 in Atlanta, that's one day short of a full moon, but also Saturday
night. This time the full moon falls on Monday, August 25. He likes the
weekend, though, so we're ready from Friday on."
"Ready? We're ready?"
"Correct. You know how it is
in the textbooks - the ideal way to investigate a homicide?"
"I never saw it done that
way," Graham said. "It never works out like that."
"No. Hardly ever. It would
be great to be able to do it, though: Send one guy in. Just one. Let him go
over the place. He's wired and dictating all the time. He gets the place
absolutely cherry for as long as he needs. Just him . . . just you."
A long pause.
"What are you telling
me?"
"Starting the night of
Friday, the twenty-second, we have a Grumman Gulfstream standing by at Andrews
Air Force Base. I borrowed it from Interior. The basic lab stuff will be on it.
We stand by - me, you, Zeller, Jimmy Price, a photographer, and two people to
do interrogations. Soon as the call comes in, we're on our way. Anywhere in the
East or South, we can be there in an hour and fifteen minutes."
"What about the locals? They
don't have to cooperate. They won't wait."
"We're blanketing the chiefs
of police and sheriffs' departments. Every one of them. We're asking orders to
be posted on the dispatchers' consoles and the duty officers' desks."
Graham shook his head.
"Balls. They'd never hold off. They couldn't."
"This is what we're asking -
it's not so much. We're asking that when a report comes in, the first officers
at the scene go in and look. Medical personnel go in and make sure nobody's
left alive. They come back out. Roadblocks, interrogations, go on any way they
like, but the scene, that's sealed off until we get there. We drive up,
you go in. You're wired. You talk it out to us when you feel like it, don't say
anything when you don't feel like it. Take as long as you want. Then we'll come
in."
"The locals won't
wait."
"Of course they won't.
They'll send in some guys from Homicide. But the request will have some effect.
It'll cut down on traffic in there, and you'll get it fresh."
Fresh. Graham tilted his head
back against his chair and stared at the ceiling.
"Of course," Crawford
said, "we've still got thirteen days before that weekend."
"Aw, Jack."
"'Jack' what?" Crawford
said.
"You kill me, you really
do."
"I don't follow you."
"Yes you do. What you've
done, you've decided to use me for bait because you don't have anything else.
So before you pop the question, you pump me up about how bad next time will be.
Not bad psychology. To use on a fucking idiot. What did you think I'd say? You
worried I don't have the onions for it since that with Lecter?"
"No."
"I wouldn't blame you for
wondering. We both know people it happened to. I don't like walking around in a
Kevlar vest with my butt puckered up. But hell, I'm in it now. We can't go home
as long as he's loose."
"I never doubted you'd do
it."
Graham saw that this was true.
"It's something more then, isn't it?"
Crawford said nothing.
"No Molly. No way."
"Jesus, Will, even I
wouldn't ask you that."
Graham stared at him for a
moment. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Jack. You've decided to play ball with
Freddy Lounds, haven't you? You and little Freddy have cut a deal."
Crawford frowned at a spot on his
tie. He looked up at Graham. "You know yourself it's the best way to bait
him. The Tooth Fairy's gonna watch the Tattler. What else have we
got?"
"It has to be Lounds doing
it?"
"He's got the corner on the
Tattler."
"So I really bad-mouth the
Tooth Fairy in the Tattler and then we give him a shot. You think it's better
than the mail drop? Don't answer that, I know it is. Have you talked to Bloom
about it?"
"Just in passing. We'll both
get together with him. And Lounds. We'll run the mail drop on him at the same
time."
"What about the setup? I
think we'll have to give him a pretty good shot at it. Something open.
Someplace where he can get close. I don't think he'd snipe. He might fool me,
but I can't see him with a rifle."
"We'll have stillwatches on
the high places."
They were both thinking the same
thing. Kevlar body armor would stop the Tooth Fairy's nine-millimeter and his
knife unless Graham got hit in the face. There was no way to protect him
against a head shot if a hidden rifleman got the chance to fire.
"You talk to Lounds. I don't
have to do that."
"He needs to interview you,
Will," Crawford said gently. "He has to take your picture."
Bloom had warned Crawford he'd
have trouble on that point.
When the time came, Graham
surprised both Crawford and Bloom. He seemed willing to meet Lounds halfway and
his expression was affable beneath the cold blue eyes.
Being inside FBI headquarters had
a salutary effect on Lounds's manners. He was polite when he remembered to be,
and he was quick and quiet with his equipment.
Graham balked only once: he
flatly refused to let Lounds see Mrs. Leeds's diary or any of the families'
private correspondence.
When the interview began, he
answered Lounds's questions in a civil tone. Both men consulted notes taken in
conference with Dr. Bloom. The questions and answers were often rephrased.
# # #
Alan Bloom had found it difficult
to scheme toward hurt. In the end, he simply laid out his theories about the
Tooth Fairy. The others listened like karate students at an anatomy lecture.
Dr. Bloom said the Tooth Fairy's
acts and his letter indicated a projective delusional scheme which compensated
for intolerable feelings of inadequacy. Smashing the mirrors tied these
feelings to his appearance.
The killer's objection to the
name "Tooth Fairy" was grounded in the homosexual implications of the
word "fairy." Bloom believed he had an unconscious homosexual
conflict, a terrible fear of being gay. Dr. Bloom's opinion was reinforced by
one curious observation at the Leeds house: fold marks and covered bloodstains
indicated the Tooth Fairy put a pair of shorts on Charles Leeds after he was
dead.
Dr. Bloom believed he did this to
emphasize his lack of interest in Leeds.
The psychiatrist talked about the
strong bonding of aggressive and sexual drives that occurs in sadists at a very
early age.
The savage attacks aimed
primarily at the women and performed in the presence of their families were
clearly strikes at a maternal figure. Bloom, pacing, talking half to himself,
called his subject "the child of a nightmare." Crawford's eyelids
drooped at the compassion in his voice.
# # #
In the interview with Lounds,
Graham made statements no investigator would make and no straight newspaper
would credit.
He speculated that the Tooth
Fairy was ugly, impotent with persons of the opposite sex, and he claimed
falsely that the killer had sexually molested his male victims. Graham said
that the Tooth Fairy doubtless was the laughingstock of his acquaintances and
the product of an incestuous home.
He emphasized that the Tooth
Fairy obviously was not as intelligent as Hannibal Lecter. He promised to
provide the Tattler with more observations and insights about the killer
as they occurred to him. Many law-inforcement people disagreed with him, he
said, but as long as he was heading the investigation, the Tattler could count
on getting the straight stuff from him.
Lounds took a lot of pictures.
The key shot was taken in
Graham's "Washington hideaway," an apartment he had "borrowed to
use until he squashed the Fairy." It was the only place where he could
"find solitude" in the "carnival atmosphere" of the
investigation.
The photograph showed Graham in a
bathrobe at a desk, studying late into the night. He was poring over a
grotesque "artist's conception" of "the Fairy."
Behind him a slice of the
floodlit Capitol dome could be seen through the window. Most importantly, in
the lower-left corner of the window, blurred but readable, was the sign of a
popular motel across the street.
The Tooth Fairy could find the
apartment if he wanted to.
At FBI headquarters, Graham was
photographed in front of a mass spectrometer. It had nothing to do with the
case, but Lounds thought it looked impressive.
Graham even consented to have his
picture taken with Lounds interviewing him. They did it in front of the vast
gun racks in Firearms and Toolmarks. Lounds held a nine-millimeter automatic of
the same type as the Tooth Fairy's weapon. Graham pointed to the homemade
silencer, fashioned from a length of television-antenna mast.
Dr. Bloom was surprised to see
Graham put a comradely hand on Lounds's shoulder just before Crawford clicked
the shutter.
The interview and pictures were
set to appear in the Tattler published the next day, Monday, August 11.
As soon as he had the material, Lounds left for Chicago. He said he wanted to
supervise the layout himself. He made arrangements to meet Crawford on Tuesday
afternoon five blocks from the trap.
Starting Tuesday, when the Tattler
became generally available, two traps would be baited for the monster.
Graham would go each evening to
his "temporary residence" shown in the Tattler picture.
A coded personal notice in the
same issue invited the Tooth Fairy to a mail drop in Annapolis watched around
the clock. If he were suspicious of the mail drop, he might think the effort to
catch him was concentrated there. Then Graham would be a more appealling
target, the FBI reasoned.
Florida authorities provided a
stillwatch at Sugarloaf Key.
There was an air of
dissatisfaction among the hunters - two major stakeouts took manpower that
could be used elsewhere, and Graham's presence at the trap each night would
limit his movement to the Washington area.
Though Crawford's judgment told
him this was the best move, the whole procedure was too passive for his taste.
He felt they were playing games with themselves in the dark of the moon with less
than two weeks to go before it rose full again.
Sunday and Monday passed in
curiously jerky time. The minutes dragged and the hours flew.
# # #
Spurgen, chief SWAT instructor at
Quantico, circled the apartment block on Monday afternoon. Graham rode beside
him. Crawford was in the back seat.
"The pedestrian traffic
falls off around seven-fifteen. Everybody's settled in for dinner,"
Spurgen said. With his wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on
his head, he looked like an infielder. "Give us a toot on the clear band
tomorrow night when you cross the B&O railroad tracks. You ought to try to
make it about eight-thirty, eight-forty or so."
He pulled into the apartment
parking lot. "This setup ain't heaven, but it could be worse. You'll park
here tomorrow night. We'll change the space you use every night after that, but
it'll always be on this side. It's seventy-five yards to the apartment
entrance. Let's walk it."
Spurgen, short and bandy-legged,
went ahead of Graham and Crawford.
He's looking for
places where he could get the bad hop, Graham thought.
"The walk is probably where
it'll happen, if it happens," the SWAT leader said. "See, from here
the direct line from your car to the entrance, the natural route, is across the
center of the lot. It's as far as you can get from the line of cars that are
here all day. He'll have to come across open asphalt to get close. How well do
you hear?"
"Pretty well," Graham
said. "Damn well on this parking lot."
Spurgen looked for something in
Graham's face, found nothing he could recognize.
He stopped in the middle of the
lot. "We're reducing the wattage on these streetlights a little to make it
tougher on a rifleman."
"Tougher on your people
too," Crawford said.
"Two of ours have Startron
night scopes," Spurgen said. "I've got some clear spray I'll ask you
to use on your suit jackets, Will. By the way, I don't care how hot it is, you
will wear body armor each and every time. Correct?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"It's Kevlar - what, Jack? -
Second Chance?"
"Second Chance,"
Crawford said.
"It's pretty likely he'll
come up to you, probably from behind, or he may figure on meeting you and then
turning around to shoot when he's passed you," Spurgen said. "Seven
times he's gone for the head shot, right? He's seen that work. He'll do it with
you too if you give him the time. Don't give him the time. After I show you a
couple of things in the lobby and the flop, let's go to the range. Can you do
that?"
"He can do that,"
Crawford said.
Spurgen was high priest on the
range. He made Graham wear earplugs under the earmuffs and flashed targets at
him from every angle. He was relieved to see that Graham did not carry the
regulation .38, but he worried about the flash from the ported barrel. They
worked for two hours. The man insisted on checking the cylinder crane and
cylinder latch screws on Graham's .44 when he had finished firing.
Graham showered and changed
clothes to get the smell of gun-smoke off him before he drove to the bay for
his last free night with Molly and Willy.
He took his wife and stepson to
the grocery store after dinner and made a considerable to-do over selecting
melons. He made sure they bought plenty of groceries - the old Tattler
was still on the racks beside the checkout stands and he hoped Molly would not
see the new issue coming in the morning. He didn't want to tell her what was
happening.
When she asked him what he wanted
for dinner in the coming week, he had to say he'd be away, that he was going
back to Birmingham. It was the first real lie he had ever told her and telling
it made him feel as greasy as old currency.
He watched her in the aisles:
Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her
insistence on quarterly medical checkups for him and Willy, her controlled fear
of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of
their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.
Pachelbel's Canon
filled the sun-drowned room where thev learned each other and there was the
exhilaration too big to hold and even then the fear flickered across him like
an osprey's shadow: this is too good to live for long.
Molly switched her bag often from
shoulder to shoulder in the grocery aisles, as though the gun in it weighed
much more than its nineteen ounces.
Graham would have been offended
had he heard the ugly thing he mumbled to the melons: "I have to put that
bastard in a rubber sack, that's all. I have to do that."
Variously weighted with lies,
guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop.
Molly smelled a rat. She and
Graham did not speak after the lights were out. Molly dreamed of heavy crazy
footsteps coming in a house of changing rooms.
There is a newsstand in Lambert
St. Louis International Airport which carries many of the major daily
newspapers from all over the United States. The New York, Washington, Chicago,
and Los Angeles papers come in by air freight and you can buy them on the same
day they are published.
Like many newsstands, this one is
owned by a chain and, along with the standard magazines and papers, the
operator is required to take a certain amount of trash.
When the Chicago Tribune
was delivered to the stand at ten o'clock on Monday night, a bundle of Tattlers
thumped to the floor beside it. The bundle was still warm in the center.
The newsstand operator squatted
in front of his shelves arranging the Tribunes. He had enough else to
do. The day guys never did their share of straightening.
A pair of black zippered boots
came into the corner of his vision. A browser. No, the boots were pointed at
him. Somebody wanted some damn thing. The newsie wanted to finish arranging his
Tribunes but the insistent attention made the back of his head prickle.
His trade was transient. He
didn't have to be nice. "What is it?" he said to the knees.
"A Tattler."
"You'll have to wait until I
bust the bundle."
The boots did not go away. They
were too close.
"I said you'll have to wait
until I bust the bundle. Understand? See I'm working here?"
A hand and a flash of bright
steel and the twine on the bundle beside him parted with a pop. A Susan B.
Anthony dollar rang on the floor in front of him. A clean copy of the Tattler,
jerked from the center of the bundle, spilled the top ones to the floor.
The newsstand operator got to his
feet. His cheeks were flushed. The man was leaving with the paper under his
arm.
"Hey. Hey, you."
The man turned to face him.
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. I told
you-"
"You told me what?" He
was coming back. He stood too close. "You told me what?"
Usually a rude merchant can
fluster his customers. There was something awful in this one's calm.
The newsie looked at the floor.
"You got a quarter coming back." Dolarhyde turned his back and walked
out. The newsstand operator's cheeks burned for half an hour. Yeah, that guy
was in here last week too. He comes in here again, I'll tell him where to
fuckin' get off. I got somethin' under the counter for wise-asses.
Dolarhyde did not look at the
Tattler in the airport. Last Thursday's message from Lecter had left him with
mixed feelings. Dr. Lecter had been right, of course, in saying that he was
beautiful and it was thrilling to read. He was beautiful. He felt some contempt
for the doctor's fear of the policeman. Lecter did not understand much better
than the public.
Still, he was on fire to know if
Lecter had sent him another message. He would wait until he got home to look.
Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control.
He mused about the newsstand
operator as he drove.
There was a time when he would
have apologized for disturbing the man and never come back to the newsstand.
For years he had taken shit unlimited from people. Not anymore. The man could
have insulted Francis Dolarhyde: he could not face the Dragon. It was all part
of Becoming.
# # #
At midnight, the light above his
desk still burned. The message from the Tattler was decoded and wadded
on the floor. Pieces of the Tattler were scattered where Dolarhyde had
clipped it for his journal. The great journal stood open beneath the painting
of the Dragon, glue still drying where the new clippings were fastened. Beneath
them, freshly attached, was a small plastic bag, empty as yet.
The legend beside the bag said:
"With These He Offended Me."
But Dolarhyde had left his desk.
He was sitting on the basement
stairs in the cool must of earth and mildew. The beam from his electric lantern
moved over draped furniture, the dusty backs of the great mirrors that once
hung in the house and now leaned against the walls, the trunk containing his
case of dynamite.
The beam stopped on a tall draped
shape, one of several in the far corner of the cellar. Cobwebs touched his face
as he went to it. Dust made him sneeze when he pulled off the cloth cover.
He blinked back the tears and
shone his light on the old oak wheelchair he had uncovered. It was high-backed,
heavy, and strong, one of three in the basement. The county had provided them
to Grandmother in the 1940's when she ran her nursing home here.
The wheels squeaked as he rolled
the chair across the floor. Despite its weight, he carried it easily up the
stairs. In the kitchen he oiled the wheels. The small front wheels still
squeaked, but the back ones had good bearings and spun freely at a flip of his
finger.
The searing anger in him was
eased by the wheels' soothing hum. As he spun them, Dolarhyde hummed too.
When Freddy Lounds left the Tattler
office at noon on Tuesday he was tired and high. He had put together the Tattler
story on the plane to Chicago and laid it out in the composing room in thirty
minutes flat.
The rest of the time he had
worked steadily on his paperback, brushing off all callers. He was a good
organizer and now he had fifty thousand words of solid background.
When the Tooth Fairy was caught,
he'd do a whammo lead and an account of the capture. The background material
would fit in neatly. He had arranged to have three of the Tattler's better
reporters ready to go on short notice. Within hours of the capture they could
be digging for details wherever the Tooth Fairy lived.
His agent talked very big
numbers. Discussing the project with the agent ahead of time was, strictly
speaking, a violation of his agreement with Crawford. All contracts and memos
would be postdated after the capture to cover that up.
Crawford held a big stick - he
had Lounds's threat on tape. Interstate transmission of a threatening message
was an indictable offense outside any protection Lounds enjoyed under the First
Amendment. Lounds also knew that Crawford, with one phone call, could give him
a permanent problem with the Internal Revenue Service.
There were polyps of honesty in
Lounds; he had few illusions about the nature of his work. But he had developed
a near-religious fervor about this project.
He was possessed with a vision of
a better life on the other side of the money. Buried under all the dirt he had
ever done, his old hopes still faced east. Now they stirred and strained to
rise.
Satisfied that his cameras and
recording equipment were ready, he drove home to sleep for three hours before
the flight to Washington, where he would meet Crawford near the trap.
A damned nuisance in the
underground garage. The black van, parked in the space next to his, was over
the line. It crowded into the space clearly marked "Mr. Frederick
Lounds."
Lounds opened his door hard,
banging the side of the van and leaving a dent and a mark. That would teach the
inconsiderate bastard.
Lounds was locking his car when
the van door opened behind him. He was turning, had half-turned when the flat
sap thocked over his ear. He got his hands up, but his knees were going and
there was tremendous pressure around his neck and the air was shut off. When
his heaving chest could fill again it sucked chloroform.
# # #
Dolarhyde parked the van behind
his house, climbed out and stretched. He had fought a crosswind all the way
from Chicago and his arms were tired. He studied the night sky. The Perseid
meteor shower was due soon, and he must not miss it.
Revelation: And his
tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them down to the
earth . . .
His doing in another time. He
must see it and remember.
Dolarhyde unlocked the back door
and made his routine search of the house. When he came outside again he wore a
stocking mask.
He opened the van and attached a
ramp. Then he rolled out Freddy Lounds. Lounds wore nothing but his shorts and
a gag and blindfold. Though he was only semiconscious, he did not slump. He sat
up very straight, his head against the high back of the old oak wheelchair.
From the back of his head to the soles of his feet he was bonded to the chair
with epoxy glue.
Dolarhyde rolled him into the
house and parked him in a corner of the parlor with his back to the room, as
though he had misbehaved.
“Are you too cool? Would you like
a blanket?”
Dolarhyde peeled off the sanitary
napkins covering Lounds’s eyes and mouth. Lounds didn’t answer. The odor of
chloroform hung on him.
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
Dolarhyde took an afghan from the sofa and tucked it around Lounds up to the
chin, then pressed an ammonia bottle under his nose.
Lounds’s eyes opened wide on a
blurred joining of walls. He coughed and started talking.
“Accident? Am I hurt bad?”
The voice behind him: “No, Mr.
Lounds. You’ll be just fine.”
“My back hurts. My skin. Did I
get burned? I hope to God I’m not burned.”
“Burned? Burned. No. You just
rest here. I’ll be with you in a little while.”
“Let me lie down. Listen, I want
you to call my office. My God, I’m in a Striker frame. My back’s broken – tell
me the truth!”
Footsteps going away.
“What am I doing here?” The
question shrill at the end.
The answer came from far behind
him. “Atoning, Mr. Lounds.”
Lounds heard footsteps mounting
stairs. He heard a shower running. His head was clearer now. He remembered leaving
the office and driving, but he couldn’t remember after that. The side of his
head throbbed and the smell of chloroform made him gag. Held rigidly erect, he
was afraid he would vomit and drown. He opened his mouth wide and breathed
deep. He could hear his heart.
Lounds hoped he was asleep. He
tried to raise his arm from the armrest, increasing the pull deliberately until
the pain in his palm and arm was enough to wake him from any dream. He was not
asleep. His mind gathered speed.
By straining he could turn his
eyes enough to see his arm for seconds at a time. He saw how he was fastened.
This was no device to protect broken backs. This was no hospital. Someone had
him.
Lounds thought he heard footsteps
on the floor above, but they might have been his heartbeats.
He tried to think. Strained to
think. Keep cool and think, he whispered. Cool and think.
The stairs creaked as Dolarhyde
came down.
Lounds felt the weight of him in
every step. A presence behind him now.
Lounds spoke several words before
he could adjust the volume of his voice.
“I haven’t seen your face. I
couldn’t identify you. I don’t know what you look like. The Tattler, I
work for The National Tattler, would pay a reward . . . a big reward for
me. Half a million, a million maybe. A million dollars.”
Silence behind him. Then a squeak
of couch springs. He was sitting down, then.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
Put the pain and fear away and
think. Now. For all time. To have some time. To have years. He hasn’t decided
to kill me. He hasn’t let me see his face.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to
me.”
“Do you know Who I Am, Mr.
Lounds?”
“No. I don’t want to know,
believe me.”
“According to you, I’m a vicious,
perverted sexual failure. An animal, you said. Probably turned loose from an
asylum by a do-good judge.” Ordinarily, Dolarhyde would have avoided the
sibilant /s/ in “sexual.” In the presence of this audience, very far from
laughter, he was freed. “You know now, don’t you?”
Don’t lie. Think fast. “Yes.”
“Why do you write lies, Mr.
Lounds? Why do you say I’m crazy? Answer now.”
“When a person . . . when a
person does things that most pcople can’t understand, they call him . . .”
“Crazy.”
“They called, like . . . the
Wright brothers. All through history-“
“History. Do you understand what
I’m doing, Mr. Lounds?”
Understand. There it was. A
chance. Swing hard. “No, but I think I’ve got an opportunity to understand, and
then all my readers could understand too.”
“Do you feel privileged?”
“It’s a privilege. But I have to
tell you, man to man, that I’m scared. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re
scared. If you have a great idea, you wouldn’t have to scare me for me to
really be impressed.”
“Man to man. Man to man. You use
that expression to imply frankness, Mr. Lounds, I appreciate that. But you see,
I am not a man. I began as one but by the Grace of God and my own Will, I have
become Other and More than a man. You say you’re frightened. Do you believe
that God is in attendance here, Mr. Lounds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you praying to Him now?”
“Sometimes I pray. I have to tell
you, I just pray mostly when I’m scared.”
“And does God help you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think
about it after. I ought to.”
“You ought to. Um-hmmmm. There
are so many things you ought to understand. In a little while I’ll help you
understand. Will you excuse me now?”
“Certainly.”
Footsteps out of the room. The
slide and rattle of a kitchen drawer. Lounds had covered many murders committed
in kitchens where things are handy. Police reporting can change forever your
view of kitchens. Water running now.
Lounds thought it must be night.
Crawford and Graham were expecting him. Certainly he had been missed by now. A
great, hollow sadness pulsed briefly with his fear.
Breathing behind him, a flash of
white caught by his rolling eye. A hand, powerful and pale. It held a cup of
tea with honey. Lounds sipped it through a straw.
“I’d do a big story,” he said
between sips. “Anything you want to say. Describe you any way you want, or no
description, no description.”
“Shhhh.” A single finger tapped
the top of his head. The lights brightened. The chair began to turn.
“No.I don’t want to see you.”
“Oh, but you must, Mr. Lounds.
You’re a reporter. You’re here to report. When I turn you around, open your
eyes and look at me. If you won’t open them yourself, I’ll staple your eyelids
to your forehead.”
A wet mouth noise, a snapping
click and the chair spun. Lounds faced the room, his eyes tight shut. A finger
tapped insistently on his chest. A touch on his eyelids. He looked.
To Lounds, seated, he seemed very
tall standing in his kimono. A stocking mask was rolled up to his nose. He
turned his back to Lounds and dropped the robe. The great back muscles flexed
above the brilliant tattoo of the tail that ran down his lower back and wrapped
around the leg.
The Dragon turned his head
slowly, looked over his shoulder at Lounds and smiled, all jags and stains.
“Oh my dear God Jesus,” Lounds
said.
Lounds now in the center of the
room where he can see the screen. Dolarhyde, behind him, has put on his robe
and put in the teeth that allow him to speak.
“Do you want to know What I Am?”
Lounds tried to nod; the chair
jerked his scalp. “More than anything. I was afraid to ask.”
“Look.”
The first slide was Blake’s
painting, the great Man-Dragon, wings flared and tail lashing, poised above the
Woman Clothed with the Sun.
“Do you see now?”
“I see.”
Rapidly Dolarhyde ran through his
other slides. Click. Mrs. Jacobi alive. “Do you see?” “Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds alive. “Do you
see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Dolarhyde, the Dragon
rampant, muscles flexed and tail tattoo above the Jacobis’ bed. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Jacobi waiting. “Do
you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Jacobi after. “Do you
see?”
“Yes.”
Click. The Dragon rampant. “Do
you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds waiting, her
husband slack beside her. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds after,
harlequined with blood. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Freddy Lounds, a copy of a
Tattler photograph. “Do you see?”
“Oh God.”
“Do you see?”
“Oh my God.” The words drawn out,
as a child speaks crying.
“Do you see?”
“Please no.”
“No what?”
“Not me.”
“No what? You’re a man, Mr.
Lounds. Are you a man?”
“Yes.”
“Do you imply that I’m some kind
of queer?”
“God no.”
“Are you a queer, Mr. Lounds?”
“No.”
“Are you going to write more lies
about me, Mr. Lounds?”
“Oh no, no.”
“Why did you write lies, Mr.
Lounds?”
“The police told me. It was what
they said.”
“You quote Will Graham.”
“Graham told me the lies.
Graham.”
“Will you tell the truth now?
About Me. My Work. My Becoming. My Art, Mr. Lounds. Is this Art?”
“Art.”
The fear in Lounds’s face freed
Dolarhyde to speak and he could fly on sibilants and fricatives; plosives were
his great webbed wings.
“You said that I, who see more
than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am
insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much
deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust. Your life to
mine is a slug track on stone. A thin silver mucus track in and out of the letters
on my monument.” The words Dolarhyde had written in his journal swarmed in him
now.
“I am the Dragon and you call me
insane? My movements are followed and recorded as avidly as those of a mighty
guest star. Do you know about the guest star in 1054? Of course not. Your
readers follow you like a child follows a slug track with his finger, and in
the same tired loops of reason. Back to your shallow skull and potato face as a
slug follows his own slime back home.
“Before Me you are a slug in the
sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an
ant in the afterbirth.
“It is in your nature to do one
thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me,
Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe.”
Dolarhyde stood with his head
down, his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. Then he left the
room.
He didn’t take off
the mask, Lounds thought. He didn’t take off the mask. If he comes back with it
off, I’m dead. God, I’m wet all over. He rolled his eyes toward the
doorway and waited through the sounds ftom the back of the house.
When Dolarhyde returned, he still
wore the mask. He carried a lunch box and two thermoses. “For your trip back
home.” He held up a thermos. “Ice, we’ll need that. Before we go, we’ll tape a
little while.”
He clipped a microphone to the
afghan near Lounds’s face. “Repeat after me.”
They taped for half an hour.
Finally, “That’s all, Mr. Lounds. You did very well.”
“You’ll let me go now?”
“I will. There’s one way, though,
that I can help you better understand and remember.” Dolarhyde turned away.
“I want to understand, I want you
to know I appreciate you turning me loose. I’m really going to be fair from now
on, you know that.”
Dolarhyde could not answer. He
had changed his teeth.
The tape recorder was running
again.
He smiled at Lounds, a
brown-stained smile. He placed his hand on Lounds’s heart and, leaning to him
intimately as though to kiss him, he bit Lounds’s lips off and spit them on the
floor.
Dawn in Chicago, heavy air and
the gray sky low.
A security guard came out of the
lobby of the Tattler building and stood at the curb smoking a cigarette
and rubbing the small of his back. He was alone on the street and in the quiet
he could hear the clack of the traffic light changing at the top of the hill, a
long block away.
Half a block north of the light,
out of the guard’s sight, Francis Dolarhyde squatted beside Lounds in the back
of the van. He arranged the blanket in a deep cowl that hid Lounds’s head.
Lounds was in great pain. He
appeared stuporous, but his mind was racing. There were things he must
remember. The blindfold was tented across his nose and he could see Dolarhyde’s
fingers checking the crusted gag.
Dolarhyde put on the white jacket
of a medical orderly, laid a thermos in Lounds’s lap and rolled him out of the
van. When he locked the wheels of the chair and turned to put the ramp back in
the van, Lounds could see the end of the van’s bumper beneath his blindfold.
Turning now, seeing the bumper
guard . . . Yes! The license plate. Only a flash, but Lounds burned it into his
mind.
Rolling now. Sidewalk seams.
Around a corner and down a curb. Paper crackled under the wheels.
Dolarhyde stopped the wheelchair
in a bit of littered shelter between a garbage dumpster and a parked truck. He
pulled at the blindfold. Lounds closed his eyes. An ammonia bottle under his
nose.
The soft voice close beside him.
“Can you hear me? You’re almost
there.” The blindfold off now. “Blink if you can hear me.”
Dolarhyde opened his eye with a
thumb and forefinger. Lounds was looking at Dolarhyde’s face.
“I told you one fib.” Dolarhyde
tapped the thermos. “I don’t really have your lips on ice.” He whipped
off the blanket and opened the thermos.
Lounds strained hard when he
smelled the gasoline, separating the skin from under his forearms and making
the stout chair groan. The gas was cold all over him, fumes filling his throat
and they were rolling toward the center of the street
“Do you like being Graham’s pet,
Freeeeedeeeee?”
Lit with a whump and shoved, sent
rolling down on the Tattler, eeek, eeek, eeekeeekeeek the wheels.
The guard looked up as a scream
blew the burning gag away. He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the
potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings,
disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows.
It veered, struck a parked car
and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through
the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned.
The guard ran back into the
lobby. He wondered if it would blow up, if he should get away from the windows.
He pulled the fire alarm. What else? He grabbed the fire extinguisher off the
wall and looked outside. It hadn’t blown up yet.
The guard approached cautiously
through the greasy smoke spreading low over the pavement and, at last, sprayed
foam on Freddy Lounds.
The schedule called for Graham to
leave the staked-out apartment in Washington at 5:45 A.M., well ahead of the
morning rush.
Crawford called while he was
shaving.
“Good morning.”
“Not so good,” Crawford said.
“The Tooth Fairy got Lounds in Chicago.”
“Oh hell no.”
“He’s not dead yet and he’s
asking for you. He can’t wait long.”
“I’ll go.”
“Meet me at the airport. United
245. It leaves in forty minutes. You can be back for the stakeout, if it’s
still on.”
# # #
Special Agent Chester from the
Chicago FBI office met them at O'Hare in a downpour. Chicago is a city used to
sirens. The traffic parted reluctantly in front of them as Chester howled down
the expressway, his red light flashing pink on the driving rain.
He raised his voice above the
siren. "Chicago PD says he was jumped in his garage. My stuff is secondhand.
We're not popular around here today."
"How much is out?"
Crawford said.
"The whole thing, trap, all
of it."
"Did Lounds get a look at
him?"
"I haven't heard a
description. Chicago PD put out an all-points bulletin for a license number
about six-twenty."
"Did you get hold of Dr.
Bloom for me?"
"I got his wife, Jack. Dr.
Bloom had his gall bladder taken out this morning."
"Glorious," Crawford
said.
Chester pulled under the dripping
hospital portico. He turned in his seat. "Jack, Will, before you go up . .
. I hear this fruit really trashed Lounds. You ought to be ready for
that."
Graham nodded. All the way to
Chicago he had tried to choke his hope that Lounds would die before he had to
see him.
The corridor of Paege Burn Center
was a tube of spotless tile. A tall doctor with a curiously old-young face
beckoned Graham and Crawford away from the knot of people at Lounds's door.
"Mr. Lounds's burns are
fatal," the doctor said. "I can help him with the pain, and I intend
to do it. He breathed flames and his throat and lungs are damaged. He may not
regain consciousness. In his condition, that would be a blessing.
"In the event that he does
regain consciousness, the city police have asked me to take the airway out of
his throat so that he might possibly answer questions. I've agreed to try that
- briefly.
"At the moment his nerve
endings are anesthetized by fire. A lot of pain is coming, if he lives that
long. I made this clear to the police and I want to make it clear to you: I'll
interrupt any attempted questioning to sedate him if he wants me to. Do you
understand me?"
"Yes," Crawford said.
With a nod to the patrolman in
front of the door, the doctor clasped his hands behind his white lab coat and
moved away like a wading egret.
Crawford glanced at Graham.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay. I had the SWAT
team."
Lounds's head was elevated in the
bed. His hair and ears were gone and compresses over his sightless eyes
replaced the burned-off lids. His gums were puffed with blisters.
The nurse beside him moved an IV
stand so Graham could come close. Lounds smelled like a stable fire.
"Freddy, it's Will
Graham."
Lounds arched his neck against
the pillow.
"The movement's just reflex,
he's not conscious," the nurse said. The plastic airway holding open his
scorched and swollen throat hissed in time with the respirator.
A pale detective sergeant sat in
the corner with a tape recorder and a clipboard on his lap. Graham didn't
notice him until he spoke.
"Lounds said your name in
the emergency room before they put the airway in."
"You were there?"
"Later I was there. But I've
got what he said on tape. He gave the firemen a license number when they first
got to him. He passed out, and he was out in the ambulance, but he came around
for a minute in the emergency room when they gave him a shot in the chest. Some
Tattler people had followed the ambulance - they were there. I have a
copy of their tape."
"Let me hear it." The
detective fiddled with his tape recorder. "I think you want to use the
earphone," he said, his face carefully blank. He pushed the button.
Graham heard voices, the rattle
of casters,". . . put him in there," the bump of a litter on a
swinging door, a retching cough and a voice croaking, speaking without lips.
"Tooth Hairy."
"Freddy, did you see him?
What did he look like, Freddy?"
"Wendy? Hlease Wendy.
Grahan set ne uh. The cunt knew it. Grahan set ne uh. Cunt tut his hand on ne
in the ticture like a hucking tet. Wendy?"
A noise like a drain sucking. A
doctor's voice: "That's it. Let me get there. Get out of the way. Now."
That was all. Graham stood over
Lounds while Crawford listened to the tape.
"We're running down the
license number," the detective said.
"Could you understand what
he was saying?"
"Who's Wendy?" Crawford
asked. "That hooker in the hall. The blonde with the chest. She's been
trying to see him. She doesn't know anything."
"Why don't you let her
in?" Graham said from the bedside. His back was to them.
"No visitors."
"The man's dying."
"Think I don't know it? I've
been here since a quarter to fucking six o'clock - excuse me, Nurse."
"Take a few minutes,"
Crawford said. "Get some coffee, put some water on your face. He can't say
anything. If he does, I'll be here with the recorder."
"Okay, I could use it."
When the detective was gone,
Graham left Crawford at the bed side and approached the woman in the hall.
"Wendy?"
"Yeah."
"If you're sure you want to
go in there, I'll take you."
"I want to. Maybe I ought to
go comb my hair."
"It doesn't matter,"
Graham said.
When the policeman returned, he
didn't try to put her out. Wendy of Wendy City held Lounds's blackened claw and
looked straight at him. He stirred once, a little before noon.
"It's gonna be just fine,
Roscoe," she said. "We'll have us some high old times."
Lounds stirred again and died.
Captain Osborne of Chicago
Homicide had the gray, pointed face of a stone fox. Copies of the Tattler
were all over the police station. One was on his desk.
He didn't ask Crawford and Graham
to sit down.
"You had nothing at all
working with Lounds in the city of Chicago?"
"No, he was coming to
Washington," Crawford said. "He had a plane reservation. I'm sure
you've checked it."
"Yeah, I got it. He left his
office about one-thirty yesterday. Got jumped in the garage of his building,
must have been about ten of two."
"Anything in the
garage?"
"His keys got kicked under
his car. There's no garage attendant - they had a radio-operated door but it
came down on a couple of cars and they took it out. Nobody saw it happen.
That's getting to be the refrain today. We're working on his car."
"Can we help you
there?"
"You can have the results
when I get 'em. You haven't said much, Graham. You had plenty to say in the
paper."
"I haven't heard much
either, listening to you."
"You pissed off, Captain?"
Crawford said.
"Me? Why should I be? We run
down a phone trace for you and collar a fucking news reporter. Then you've got
no charges against him. You have got some deal with him, gets him cooked in
front of this scandal sheet. Now the other papers adopt him like he was their
own.
"Now we've got our own Tooth
Fairy murder right here in Chicago. That's great. 'Tooth Fairy in Chicago,'
boy. Before midnight we'll have six accidental domestic shootings, guy trying
to sneak in his own house drunk, wife hears him, bang. The Tooth Fairy may like
Chicago, decide to stick around, have some fun."
"We can do like this,"
Crawford said. "Butt heads, get the police commissioner and the U.S.
attorney all stirred up, get all the assholes stirred up, yours and mine. Or we
can settle down and try to catch the bastard. This was my operation and it went
to shit, I know that. You ever have that happen right here in Chicago? I don't
want to fight you, Captain. We want to catch him and go home. What do you
want?"
Osborne moved a couple of items
on his desk, a penholder, a picture of a fox-faced child in band uniform. He
leaned back in his chair, pursed his lips and blew out some air.
"Right now I want some
coffee. You guys want some?"
"I'd like some,"
Crawford said.
"So would I," Graham
said.
Osborne passed around the
Styrofoam cups. He pointed to some chairs.
"The Tooth Fairy had to have
a van or a panel truck to move Lounds around in that wheelchair," Graham
said.
Osborne nodded. "The license
plate Lounds saw was stolen off a TV repair truck in Oak Park. He took a
commercial plate, so he was getting it for a truck or a van. He replaced the
plate on the TV truck with another stolen plate so it wouldn't be noticed so
fast. Very sly, this boy. One thing we do know - he got the plate off the TV
truck sometime after eight-thirty yesterday morning. The TV repair guy bought
gas first thing yesterday and he used a credit card. The attendant copied the
correct license number on the slip, so the plate was stolen after that."
"Nobody saw any kind of
truck or van?" Crawford said.
"Nothing. The guard at the Tattler
saw zip. He could referee wrestling he sees so little. The fire department
responded first to the Tattler. They were just looking for fire. We're
canvassing the overnight workers in the Tattler neighborhood and the
neighborhoods where the TV guy worked Tuesday morning. We hope somebody saw him
cop the plate."
"I'd like to see the chair
again," Graham said.
"It's in our lab. I'll call
them for you." Osborne paused. "Lounds was a ballsy little guy, you
have to give him that. Remembering the license number and spitting it out, the
shape he was in. You listened to what Lounds said at the hospital?"
Graham nodded.
"I don't mean to rub this
in, but I want to know if we heard it the same way. What does it sound like to
you?"
Graham quoted in a monotone
"'Tooth Fairy. Graham set me up. The cunt knew it. Graham set 'me up. Cunt
put his hand on me in the picture like a fucking pet."'
Osborne could not tell how Graham
felt about it. He asked another question.
"He was talking about the
picture of you and him in the Tattler?"
"Had to be."
"Where would he get that
idea?"
"Lounds and I had a few
run-ins.
"But you looked friendly
toward Lounds in the picture. The Tooth Fairy kills the pet first, is that
it?"
"That's it." The stone
fox was pretty fast, Graham thought.
"Too bad you didn't stake
him out."
Graham said nothing.
"Lounds was supposed to be
with us by the time the Tooth Fairy saw the Tattler," Crawford
said.
"Does what he said mean
anything else to you, anything we can use?"
Graham came back from somewhere
and had to repeat Osborne's question in his mind before he answered. "We
know from what Lounds said that the Tooth Fairy saw the Tattler before
he hit Lounds, right?"
"Right."
"If you start with the idea
that the Tattler set him off, does it strike you that he set this up in
a hell of a hurry? The thing came off the press Monday night, he's in Chicago
stealing license plates sometime Tuesday, probably Tuesday morning, and he's on
top of Lounds Tuesday afternoon. What does that say to you?"
"That he saw it early or he
didn't have far to come," Crawford said. "Either he saw it here in
Chicago or he saw it someplace else Monday night. Bear in mind, he'd be
watching for it to get the personal column."
"Either he was already here,
or he came from driving distance," Graham said. "He was on top of
Lounds too fast with a big old wheelchair you couldn't carry on a plane - it
doesn't even fold. And he didn't fly here, steal a van, steal plates for it,
and go around looking for an antique wheelchair to use. He had to have an old
wheelchair - a new one wouldn't work for what he did." Graham was up,
fiddling with the cord on the venetian blinds, staring at the brick wall across
the airshaft. "He already had the wheelchair or he saw it all the
time."
Osborne started to ask a
question, but Crawford's expression cautioned him to wait.
Graham was tying knots in the
blind cord. His hands were not steady.
"He saw it all the time . .
." Crawford prompted.
"Um-hmm," Graham said.
"You can see how . . . the idea starts with the wheelchair. From the sight
and thought of the wheelchair. That's where the idea would come from when he's
thinking what he'll do to those fuckers. Freddy rolling down the street on
fire, it must have been quite a sight."
"Do you think he watched
it?"
"Maybe. He certainly saw it
before he did it, when he was making up his mind what he'd do."
Osborne watched Crawford.
Crawford was solid. Osborne knew Crawford was solid, and Crawford was going along
with this.
"If he had the chair, or he
saw it all the time . . . we can check around the nursing homes, the VA,"
Osborne said.
"It was perfect to hold
Freddy still," Graham said.
"For a long time. He was
gone fifteen hours and twenty-five minutes, more or less," Osborne said.
"If he had just wanted to
snuff Freddy, he could have done that in the garage," Graham said.
"He could have burned him in his car. He wanted to talk to Freddy, or hurt
him for a while."
"Either he did it in the
back of the van or he took him somewhere," Crawford said. "That
length of time, I'd say he took him somewhere."
"It had to be somewhere
safe. If he bundled him up good, he wouldn't attract much notice around a
nursing home, going in and out," Osborne said.
"He'd have the racket,
though," Crawford said. "A certain amount of cleaning up to do.
Assume he had the chair, and he had access to the van, and he had a safe place
to take him to work on him. Does that sound like . . . home?"
Osborne's telephone rang. He
growled into it.
"What? . . . No, I don't
want to talk to the Tattler . . . Well, it better not be bullshit. Put
her on . . . Captain Osborne, yes . . . What time? Who answered the phone
initially - at the switchboard? Take her off the switchboard, please. Tell me
again what he said . . . I'll have an officer there in five minutes."
Osborne looked at his telephone
thoughtfully after he hung up.
"Lounds's secretary got a
call about five minutes ago," he said. "She swears it was Lounds's
voice. He said something, something she didn't get,'. . . strength of the Great
Red Dragon.' That's what she thought he said."
Dr. Frederick Chilton stood in
the corridor outside Hannibal Lecter's cell. With Chilton were three large
orderlies. One carried a straitjacket and leg restraints and another held a can
of Mace. The third loaded a tranquilizer dart into his air rifle.
Lecter was reading an actuarial
chart at his table and taking notes. He had heard the footsteps coming. He
heard the rifle breech close behind him, but he continued to read and gave no
sign that he knew Chilton was there.
Chilton had sent him the
newspapers at noon and let him wait until night to find out his punishment for
helping the Dragon.
"Dr. Lecter," Chilton
said.
Lecter turned around. "Good
evening, Dr. Chilton." He didn't acknowledge the presence of the guards.
He looked only at Chilton.
"I've come for your books. All
your books."
"I see. May I ask how long
you intend to keep them?"
"That depends on your
attitude."
"Is this your
decision?"
"I decide the punitive
measures here."
"Of course you do. It's not
the sort of thing Will Graham would request."
"Back up to the net and slip
these on, Dr. Lecter. I won't ask you twice."
"Certainly, Dr. Chilton. I
hope that's a thirty-nine - the thirty-sevens are snug around the chest."
Dr. Lecter put on the restraints
as though they were dinner clothes. An orderly reached through the barrier and
fastened them from the back.
"Help him to his cot,"
Chilton said.
While the orderlies stripped the
bookshelves, Chilton polished his glasses and stirred Lecter's personal papers
with a pen.
Lecter watched from the shadowed
corner of his cell. There was a curious grace about him, even in restraints.
"Beneath the yellow
folder," Lecter said quietly, "you'll find a rejection slip the Archives
sent you. It was brought to me by mistake with some of my Archives mail,
and I'm afraid I opened it without looking at the envelope. Sorry."
Chilton reddened. He spoke to an
orderly. "I think you'd better take the seat off Dr. Lecter's
toilet."
Chilton looked at the actuarial
table. Lecter had written his age at the top: forty-one. "And what do you
have here?" Chilton asked.
"Time," Dr. Lecter
said.
# # #
Section Chief Brian Zeller took
the courier's case and the wheel-chair wheels into Instrumental Analysis,
walking at a rate that made his gabardine pants whistle.
The staff, held over from the day
shift, knew that whistling sound very well: Zeller in a hurry.
There had been enough delays. The
weary courier, his flight from Chicago delayed by weather and then diverted to
Philadelphia, had rented a car and driven down to the FBI laboratory in
Washington.
The Chicago police laboratory is
efficient, but there are things it is not equipped to do. Zeller prepared to do
them now.
At the mass spectrometer he
dropped off the paint flecks from Lounds's car door.
Beverly Katz in Hair and Fiber
got the wheels to share with others in the section.
Zeller's last stop was the small
hot room where Liza Lake bent over her gas chromatograph. She was testing ashes
from a Florida arson case, watching the stylus trace its spiky line on the
moving graph.
"Ace lighter fluid,"
she said. "That's what he lit it with." She had looked at so many
samples that she could distinguish brands without searching through the manual.
Zeller took his eyes off Liza
Lake and rebuked himself severely for feeling pleasure in the office. He
cleared his throat and held up the two shiny paint cans.
"Chicago?" she said.
Zeller nodded.
She checked the condition of the
cans and the seal of the lids. One can contained ashes from the wheelchair; the
other, charred material from Lounds.
"How long has it been in the
cans?"
"Six hours anyway,"
Zeller said.
"I'll headspace it."
She pierced the lid with a
heavy-duty syringe, extracted air that had been confined with the ashes, and
injected the air directly into the gas chromatograph. She made minute
adjustments. As the sample moved along the machine's five-hundred-foot column,
the stylus jiggled on the wide graph paper.
"Unleaded . . ." she
said. "It's gasohol, unleaded gasohol. Don't see much of that." She
flipped quickly through a looseleaf file of sample graphs. "I can't give
you a brand yet. Let me do it with pentane and I'll get back to you."
"Good," Zeller said.
Pentane would dissolve the fluids in the ashes, then fractionate early in the
chromatograph, leaving the fluids for fine analysis.
# # #
By one A.M. Zeller had all he
could get.
Liza Lake succeeded in naming the
gasohol: Freddy Lounds was burned with a "Servco Supreme" blend.
Patient brushing in the grooves
of the wheelchair treads yielded two kinds of carpet fiber - wool and
synthetic. Mold in dirt from the treads indicated the chair had been stored in
a cool, dark place.
The other results were less satisfactory.
The paint flecks were not original factory paint. Blasted in the mass
spectrometer and compared with the national automotive paint file, the paint
proved to be high-quality Duco enamel manufactured in a lot of 186,000 gallons
during the first quarter of 1978 for sale to several auto-paintshop chains.
Zeller had hoped to pinpoint a
make of vehicle and the approximate time of manufacture.
He telexed the results to
Chicago.
The Chicago police department
wanted its wheels back. The wheels made an awkward package for the courier.
Zeller put written lab reports in his pouch along with mail and a package that
had come for Graham.
"Federal Express I'm
not," the courier said when he was sure Zeller couldn't hear him.
# # #
The Justice Department maintains
several small apartments near Seventh District Court in Chicago for the use of
jurists and favored expert witnesses when court is in session. Graham stayed in
one of these, with Crawford across the hall.
He came in at nine P.M., tired
and wet. He had not eaten since breakfast on the plane from Washington and the
thought of food repelled him.
Rainy Wednesday was over at last.
It was as bad a day as he could remember.
With Lounds dead, it seemed
likely that he was next and all day Chester had watched his back; while he was
in Lounds's garage, while he stood in the rain on the scorched pavement where
Lounds was burned. With strobe lights flashing in his face, he told the press
he was "grieved at the loss of his friend Frederick Lounds."
He was going to the funeral, too.
So were a number of federal agents and police, in the hope that the killer
would come to see Graham grieve.
Actually he felt nothing he could
name, just cold nausea and an occasional wave of sickly exhilaration that he
had not burned to death instead of Lounds.
It seemed to Graham that he had
learned nothing in forty years: he had just gotten tired.
He made a big martini and drank
it while he undressed. He had another after his shower while he watched the
news.
("An FBI trap to catch the
Tooth Fairy backfires and a veteran reporter is dead. We'll be back with
details on Eyewitness News after this.")
They were referring to the killer
as "the Dragon" before the news-cast was over. The Tattler had
spilled it all to the networks. Grahain wasn't surprised. Thursday's edition
should sell well.
He made a third martini and
called Molly.
She had seen the television news
at six and ten o'clock and she had seen a Tattler. She knew that Graham
had been the bait in a trap.
"You should have told me,
Will."
"Maybe. I don't think
so."
"Will he try to kill you
now?"
"Sooner or later. It would
be hard for him now, since I'm moving around. I'm covered all the time, Molly,
and he knows it. I'll be okay."
"You sound a little slurry,
have you been to see your friend in the fridge?"
"I had a couple."
"How do you feel?"
"Fairly rotten."
"The news said the FBI
didn't have any protection for the reporter."
"He was supposed to be with
Crawford by the time the Tooth Fairy got the paper."
"The news is calling him the
Dragon now."
"That's what he calls
himself."
"Will, there's something . .
. I want to take Willy and leave here."
"And go where?"
"His grandparents'. They
haven't seen him in a while, they'd like to see him."
"Oh, um-hmm."
Willy's father's parents had a
ranch on the Oregon coast.
"It's creepy here. I know
it's supposed to be safe - but we're not sleeping a whole lot. Maybe the
shooting lessons spooked me, I don't know."
"I'm sorry, Molly." I
wish I could tell you how sorry.
"I'll miss you. We both
will."
So she had made up her mind.
"When are you going?"
"In the morning."
"What about the shop?"
"Evelyn wants to take it.
I'll underwrite the fall stuff with the wholesalers, just for the interest, and
she can keep what she makes."
"The dogs?"
"I asked her to call the county,
Will. I'm sorry, but maybe somebody will take some of them."
"Molly, I-"
"If staying here I could
keep something bad from happening to you, I'd stay. But you can't save anybody,
Will, I'm not helping you here. With us up there, you can just think about
taking care of yourself. I'm not carrying this damned pistol the rest of my
life, Will."
"Maybe you can get down to
Oakland and watch the A's." Didn't mean to say that. Oh boy, this silence
is getting pretty long.
"Well, look, I'll call
you," she said, "or I guess you'll have to call me up there."
Graham felt something tearing. He
felt short of breath. "Let me get the office to make the arrangements.
Have you made a reservation already?"
"I didn't use my name. I
thought maybe the newspapers . . ."
"Good. Good. Let me get
somebody to see you off. You wouldn't have to board through the gate, and you'd
get out of Washington absolutely clean. Can I do that? Let me do that. What
time does the plane go?"
"Nine-forty. American
118."
"Okay, eight-thirty . . .
behind the Smithsonian. There's a Park-Rite. Leave the car there. Somebody'll
meet you. He'll listen to his watch, put it to his ear when he gets out of his
car, okay?"
"That's fine."
"Say, do you change at
O'Hare? I could come out-"
"No. Change in Minneapolis."
"Oh, Molly. Maybe I could
come up there and get you when it's over?"
"That would be very
nice."
Very nice.
"Do you have enough
money?"
"The bank's wiring me
some."
"What?"
"To Barclay's at the
airport. Don't worry."
"I'll miss you."
"Me too, but that'll be the
same as now. Same distance by phone. Willy says hi."
"Hi to Willy."
"Be careful, darling."
She had never called him darling
before. He didn't care for it. He didn't care for new names; darling, Red
Dragon.
The night-duty officer in
Washington was glad to make the arrangements for Molly. Graham pressed his face
to the cool window and watched sheets of rain whip over the muffled traffic
below him, the street leaping from gray to sudden color in the lightning
flashes. His face left a print of forehead, nose, lips, and chin on the glass.
Molly was gone.
The day was over and there was
only the night to face, and the lipless voice accusing him.
Lounds's woman held what was left
of his hand until it was over.
"Hello, this is Valerie
Leeds. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now . . ."
"I'm sorry too," Graham
said.
Graham filled his glass again and
sat at the table by the window, staring at the empty chair across from him. He
stared until the space in the opposite chair assumed a man-shape filled with
dark and swarming motes, a presence like a shadow on suspended dust. He tried
to make the image coalesce, to see a face. It would not move, had no
countenance but, faceless, faced him with palpable attention.
"I know it's tough,"
Graham said. He was intensely drunk. "You've got to try to stop, just hold
off until we find you. If you've got to do something, fuck, come after me. I
don't give a shit. It'll be better after that. They've got some things now to
help you make it stop. To help you stop wanting to so bad. Help me. Help
me a little. Molly's gone, old Freddy's dead. It's you and me now, sport."
He leaned across the table, his hand extended to touch, and the presence was
gone.
Graham put his head down on the
table, his cheek on his arm. He could see the print of his forehead, nose,
mouth, and chin on the window as the lightning flashed behind it; a face with
drops crawling through it down the glass. Eyeless. A face full of rain.
Graham had tried hard to
understand the Dragon.
At times, in the breathing
silence of the victims' houses, the very spaces the Dragon had moved through
tried to speak.
Sometimes Graham felt close to
him. A feeling he remembered from other investigations had settled over him in
recent days: the taunting sense that he and the Dragon were doing the same
things at various times of the day, that there were parallels in the quotidian
details of their lives. Somewhere the Dragon was eating, or showering, or
sleeping at the same time he did.
Graham tried hard to know him. He
tried to see him past the blinding glint of slides and vials, beneath the lines
of police reports, tried to see his face through the louvers of print. He tried
as hard as he knew how.
But to begin to understand the
dragon, to hear the cold drips in his darkness, to watch the world through his
red haze, Graham would have had to see things he could never see, and he would
have had to fly through time . . .
SPRINGFIELD,
MISSOURI, June 14, 1938.
Marian Dolarhyde Trevane, tired
and in pain, got out of a taxi at City Hospital. Hot wind whipped grit against
her ankles as she climbed the steps. The suitcase she lugged was better than
her loose wash dress, and so was the mesh evening bag she pressed to her
swollen belly. She had two quarters and a dime in her bag. She had Francis
Dolarhyde in her belly.
She told the admitting officer
her name was Betty Johnson, a lie. She said her husband was a musician, but she
did not know his whereabouts, which was true.
They put her in the charity
section of the maternity ward. She did not look at the patients on either side
of her. She looked across the aisle at the soles of feet.
In four hours she was taken to
the delivery room, where Francis Dolarhyde was born. The obstetrician remarked
that he looked "more like a leaf-nosed bat than a baby," another
truth. He was born with bilateral fissures in his upper lip and in his hard and
soft palates. The center section of his mouth was unanchored and protruded. His
nose was flat.
The hospital supervisors decided
not to show him to his mother immediately. They waited to see if the infant
could survive without oxygen. They put him in a bed at the rear of the infant
ward and faced him away from the viewing window. He could breathe, but he could
not feed. With his palate cleft, he could not suck.
His crying on the first day was
not as continuous as that of a heroin-addicted baby, but it was as piercing.
By the afternoon of the second
day a thin keening was all he could produce.
When the shifts changed at three
P.M., a wide shadow fell across his bed. Prince Easter Mize, 260 pounds,
cleaning woman and aide in the maternity ward, stood looking at him, her arms
folded on top of her bosom. In twenty-six years in the nursery she had seen
about thirty-nine thousand infants. This one would live if he ate.
Prince Easter had received no
instructions from the Lord about letting this infant die. She doubted that the
hospital had received any either. She took from her pocket a rubber stopper
pierced with a curved glass drinking straw. She pushed the stopper into a
bottle of milk. She could hold the baby and support his head in one great hand.
She held him to her breast until she knew he felt her heartbeat. Then she
flipped him over and popped the tube down his throat. He took about two ounces
and went to sleep.
"Um-hum," she said. She
put him down and went about her assigned duties with the diaper pails.
# # #
On the fourth day the nurses
moved Marian Dolarhyde Trevane to a private room. Hollyhocks left over from a
previous occupant were in an enamel pitcher on the washstand. They had held up
pretty well.
Marian was a handsome girl and
the puffiness was leaving her face. She looked at the doctor when he started
talking to her, his hand on her shoulder. She could smell strong soap on his
hand and she thought about the crinkles at the corners of his eyes until she
realized what he was saying. Then she closed her eyes and did not open them
while they brought the baby in.
Finally she looked. They shut the
door when she screamed. Then they gave her a shot.
On the fifth day she left the
hospital alone. She didn't know where to go. She could never go home again; her
mother had made that clear.
Marian Dolarhyde Trevane counted
the steps between the light poles. Each time she passed three poles, she sat on
the suitcase to rest. At least she had the suitcase. In every town there was a
pawn shop near the bus station. She had learned that traveling with her
husband.
Springfield in 1938 was not a
center for plastic surgery. In Springfield, you wore your face as it was.
A surgeon at City Hospital did
the best he could for Francis Dolarhyde, first retracting the front section of
his mouth with an elastic band, then closing the clefts in his lip by a
rectangular flap technique that is now outmoded. The cosmetic results were not
good.
The surgeon had troubled to read
up on the problem and decided, correctly, that repair of the infant's hard
palate should wait until he was five. To operate sooner would distort the
growth of his face.
A local dentist volunteered to
make an obturator; which plugged the baby's palate and permitted him to feed
without flooding his nose.
The infant went to the
Springfield Foundling Home for a year and a half and then to Morgan Lee
Memorial Orphanage.
Reverend S. B. "Buddy"
Lomax was head of the orphanage. Brother Buddy called the other boys and girls
together and told them that Francis was a harelip but they must be careful
never to call him a harelip.
Brother Buddy suggested they pray
for him.
# # #
Francis Dolarhyde's mother
learned to take care of herself in the years following his birth.
Marian Dolarhyde first found a
job typing in the office of a ward boss in the St. Louis Democratic machine.
With his help she had her marriage to the absent Mr. Trevane annulled.
There was no mention of a child
in the annulment proceedings.
She had nothing to do with her
mother. ("I didn't raise you to slut for that Irish trash" were Mrs.
Dolarhyde's parting words to Marian when she left home with Trevane.)
Marian's ex-husband called her
once at the office. Sober and pious, he told her he had been saved and wanted
to know if he, Marian, and the child he "never had the joy of
knowing" might make a new life together. He sounded broke.
Marian told him the child was
born dead and she hung up.
He showed up drunk at her
boardinghouse with his suitcase.
When she told him to go away, he
observed that it was her fault the marriage failed and the child was stillborn.
He expressed doubt that the child was his.
In a rage Marian Dolarhyde told
Michael Trevane exactly what he had fathered and told him he was welcome to it.
She reminded him that there were two cleft palates in the Trevane family.
She put him in the street and
told him never to call her again. He didn't. But years later, drunk and
brooding over Marian's rich new husband and her fine life, he did call Marian's
mother.
He told Mrs. Dolarhyde about the
deformed child and said her snag teeth proved the hereditary fault lay with the
Dolarhydes.
A week later a Kansas City
streetcar cut Michael Trevane in two.
When Trevane told Mrs. Dolarhyde
that Marian had a hidden son, she sat up most of the night. Tall and lean in
her rocker, Grandmother Dolarhyde stared into the fire. Toward dawn she began a
slow and purposeful rocking.
Somewhere upstairs in the big
house, a cracked voice called out of sleep. The floor above Grandmother
Dolarhyde creaked as someone shuffled toward the bathroom.
A heavy thump on the ceiling -
someone falling - and the cracked voice called in pain.
Grandmother Dolarhyde never took
her eyes off the fire. She rocked faster and, in time, the calling stopped.
# # #
Near the end of his fifth year,
Francis Dolarhyde had his first and only visitor at the orphanage.
He was sitting in the thick reek
of the cafeteria when an older boy came for him and took him to Brother Buddy's
office.
The lady waiting with Brother
Buddy was tall and middle-aged, dredged in powder, her hair in a tight bun. Her
face was stark white. There were touches of yellow in the gray hair and in the
eyes and teeth.
What struck Francis, what he
would always remember: she smiled with pleasure when she saw his face. That had
never happened before. No one would ever do it again.
"This is your
grandmother," Brother Buddy said.
"Hello," she said.
Brother Buddy wiped his own mouth
with a long hand. "Say 'hello.' Go ahead."
Francis had learned to say some
things by occluding his nostrils with his upper lip, but he did not have much
occasion for "hello."
"Lhho" was the best he
could do.
Grandmother seemed even more
pleased with him. "Can you say 'grandmother'?"
"Try to say
'grandmother,"' Brother Buddy said.
The plosive G defeated him.
Francis strangled easily on tears. A red wasp buzzed and tapped against the
ceiling.
"Never mind," his
grandmother said. "I'll just bet you can say your name. I just know a big
boy like you can say his name. Say it for me."
The child's face brightened. The
big boys had helped him with this. He wanted to please. He collected himself.
"Cunt Face," he said.
# # #
Three days later Grandmother
Dolarhyde called for Francis at the orphanage and took him home with her. She
began at once to help him with his speech. They concentrated on a single word.
It was "Mother."
# # #
Within two years of the
annulment, Marian Dolarhyde met and married Howard Vogt, a successful lawyer
with solid connections to the St. Louis machine and what was left of the old
Pendergast machine in Kansas City.
Vogt was a widower with three
young children, an affable ambitious man fifteen years older than Marian Dolarhyde.
He hated nothing in the world except the St. Louis Post -Dispatch, which
had singed his feathers in the voter-registration scandal of 1936 and blasted
the attempt in 1940 by the St. Louis machine to steal the governorship.
By 1943 Vogt's star was rising
again. He was a brewery candidate for the state legislature and was mentioned
as a possible delegate to the upcoming state constitutional convention.
Marian was a useful and
attractive hostess and Vogt bought her a handsome, half-timbered house on Olive
Street that was perfect for entertaining.
Francis Dolarhyde had lived with
his grandmother for a week when she took him there.
Grandmother had never seen her
daughter's house. The maid who answered the door did not know her.
"I'm Mrs. Dolarhyde,"
she said, barging past the servant. Her slip was showing three inches in the
back. She led Francis into a big living room with a pleasant fire.
"Who is it, Viola?" A
woman's voice from upstairs.
Grandmother cupped Francis' face
in her hand. He could smell the cold leather glove. An urgent whisper. "Go
see Mother, Francis. Go see Mother. Run!"
He shrank from her, twisting on
the tines of her eyes.
"Go see Mother. Run!"
She gripped his shoulders and marched him toward the stairs. He trotted up to
the landing and looked back down at her. She motioned upward with her chin.
Up to the strange hallway toward
the open bedroom door.
Mother was seated at her dressing
table checking her makeup in a mirror framed with lights. She was getting ready
for a political rally, and too much rouge wouldn't do. Her back was to the
door.
"Muhner," Francis
piped, as he had been taught. He tried hard to get it right.
"Muhner."
She saw him in the mirror then.
"If you're looking for Ned, he isn't home from . . ."
"Muhner." He came into
the heartless light.
Marian heard her mother's voice
downstairs demanding tea. Her eyes widened and she sat very still. She did not
turn around. She turned out the makeup lights and vanished from the mirror. In
the darkened room she gave a single low keening that ended in a sob. It might
have been for herself, or it might have been for him.
# # #
Grandmother took Francis to all
the political rallies after that and explained who he was and where he came
from. She had him say hello to everyone. They did not work on "hello"
at home.
Mr. Vogt lost the election by
eighteen hundred votes.
At grandmother’s house, Francis
Dolarhyde's new world was a forest of blue-veined legs.
Grandmother Dolarhyde had been
running her nursing home for three years when he came to live with her. Money
had been a problem since her husband's death in 1936; she had been brought up a
lady and she had no marketable skills.
What she had was a big house and
her late husband's debts. Taking in boarders was out. The place was too
isolated to be a successful boardinghouse. She was threatened with eviction.
The announcement in the newspaper
of Marian's marriage to the affluent Mr. Howard Vogt had seemed a godsend to
Grandmother. She wrote to Marian repeatedly for help, but received no answer.
Every time she telephoned, a servant told her Mrs. Vogt was out.
Finally, bitterly, Grandmother
Dolarhyde made an arrangement with the county and began to take in elderly
indigent persons. For each one she received a sum from the county and erratic
payments from such relatives as the county could locate. It was hard until she
began to get some private patients from middle-class families.
No help from Marian all this time
- and Marian could have helped.
Now Francis Dolarhyde played on
the floor in the forest of legs. He played cars with Grandmother's Mah-Jongg
pieces, pushing them among feet twisted like gnarled roots.
Mrs. Dolarhyde could keep clean
wash dresses on her residents, but she despaired at trying to make them keep on
their shoes.
The old people sat all day in the
living room listening to the radio.
Mrs. Dolarhyde had put in a small
aquarium for them to watch as well, and a private contributor had helped her
cover her parquet floors with linoleum against the inevitable incontinence.
They sat in a row on the couches
and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish
or on nothing or something they saw long ago.
Francis would always remember the
shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed
tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of the old people like meat
wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio.
Rinso white, Rinso bright
Happy little washday song.
Francis spent as much time as he
could in the kitchen, because his friend was there. The cook, Queen Mother
Bailey, had grown up in the service of the late Mr. Dolarhyde's family. She
sometimes brought Francis a plum in her apron pocket, and she called him
"Little Possum, always dreamin'." The kitchen was warm and safe. But
Queen Mother Bailey went home at night . . .
# # #
December 1943.
Francis Dolarhyde, five years
old, lay in bed in his upstairs room in Grandmother's house. The room was pitch
dark with its blackout curtains against the Japanese. He could not say
"Japanese." He needed to pee. He was afraid to get up in the dark.
He called to his grandmother in
bed downstairs.
"Aayma. Aayma." He
sounded like an infant goat. He called until he was tired. "Mleedse
Aayma."
It got away from him then, hot on
his legs and under his scat, and then cold, his nightdress sticking to him. He
didn't know what to do. He took a deep breath and rolled over to face the door.
Nothing happened to him. He put his foot on the floor. He stood up in the dark,
nightdress plastered to his legs, face burning. He ran for the door. The
doorknob caught him over the eye and he sat down in wetness, jumped up and ran
down the stairs, fingers squealing on the banister. To his grandmother's room.
Crawling across her in the dark and under the covers, warm against her now.
Grandmother stirred, tensed, her
back hardened against his cheek, voice hissing. "I've never sheen . .
." A clatter on the bedside table as she found her teeth, clacket as she
put them in. "I've never seen a child as disgusting and dirty as you. Get
out, get out of this bed."
She turned on the bedside lamp.
He stood on the carpet shivering. She wiped her thumb across his eyebrow. Her
thumb came away bloody.
"Did you break
something?"
He shook his head so fast
droplets of blood fell on Grandmother's nightgown.
"Upstairs. Go on."
The dark came down over him as he
climbed the stairs. He couldn't turn on the lights because Grandmother had cut
the cords off short so only she could reach them. He did not want to get back
in the wet bed. He stood in the dark holding on to the footboard for a long
time. He thought she wasn't coming. The blackest corners in the room knew she
wasn't coming.
She came, snatching the short
cord on the ceiling light, her arms full of sheets. She did not speak to him as
she changed the bed.
She gripped his upper arm and
pulled him down the hall to the bathroom. The light was over the mirror and she
had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. She gave him a washcloth, wet and cold.
"Take off your nightshirt
and wipe yourself off."
Smell of adhesive tape and the
bright sewing scissors clicking. She snipped out a butterfly of tape, stood him
on the toilet lid and closed the cut over his eye.
"Now," she said. She
held the sewing scissors under his round belly and he felt cold down there.
"Look," she said. She
grabbed the back of his head and bent him over to see his little penis lying
across the bottom blade of the open scissors. She closed the scissors until
they began to pinch him.
"Do you want me to cut it
off?"
He tried to look up at her, but
she gripped his head. He sobbed and spit fell on his stomach.
"Do you?"
"No, Aayma. No, Aayma."
"I pledge you my word, if
you ever make your bed dirty again I'll cut it off. Do you understand?"
"Yehn, Aayma."
"You can find the toilet in
the dark and you can sit on it like a good boy. You don't have to stand up. Now
go back to bed."
# # #
At two A.M. the wind rose,
gusting warm out of the southeast, clacking together the branches of the dead
apple trees, rustling the leaves of the live ones. The wind drove warm rain
against the side of the house where Francis Dolarhyde, forty-two years old, lay
sleeping.
He lay on his side sucking his
thumb, his hair damp and flat on his forehead and his neck.
Now he awakes. He listens to his
breathing in the dark and the tiny clicks of his blinking eyes. His fingers
smell faintly of gasoline. His bladder is full.
He feels on the bedside table for
the glass containing his teeth. Dolarhyde always puts in his teeth before he
rises. Now he walks to the bathroom. He does not turn on the light. He finds
the toilet in the dark and sits down on it like a good boy.
The change in Grandmother first
became apparent in the winter of 1947, when Francis was eight.
She stopped taking meals in her
room with Francis. They moved to the common table in the dining room, where she
presided over meals with the elderly residents.
Grandmother had been trained as a
girl to be a charming hostess, and now she unpacked and polished her silver
bell and put it beside her plate.
Keeping a luncheon table going,
pacing the service, managing conversation, batting easy conversational lobs to
the strong points of the shy ones, turning the best facets of the bright ones
in the light of the other guests' attention is a considerable skill and one now
sadly in decline.
Grandmother had been good at it
in her time. Her efforts at this table did brighten meals initially for the two
or three among the residents who were capable of linear conversation.
Francis sat in the host's chair
at the other end of the avenue of nodding heads as Grandmother drew out the
recollections of those who could remember. She expressed keen interest in Mrs.
Floder's honeymoon trip to Kansas City, went through the yellow fever with Mr.
Eaton a number of times, and listened brightly to the random unintelligible
sounds of the others.
"Isn't that interesting,
Francis?" she said, and rang the bell for the next course. The food was a
variety of vegetable and meat mushes, hut she divided it into courses, greatly
inconveniencing the kitchen help.
Mishaps at the table were never
mentioned. A ring of the bell and a gesture in mid-sentence took care of those
who had spilled or gone to sleep or forgotten why they were at the table.
Grandmother always kept as large a staff as she could pay.
As Grandmother's general health
declined, she lost weight and was able to wear dresses that had long been
packed away. Some of them were elegant. In the cast of her features and her
hairstyle, she bore a marked resemblance to George Washington on the dollar
bill.
Her manners had slipped somewhat
by spring. She ruled the table and permitted no interruptions as she told of
her girlhood in St. Charles, even revealing personal matters to inspire and
edify Francis and the others.
It was true that Grandmother had
enjoyed a season as a belle in 1907 and was invited to some of the better balls
across the river in St. Louis.
There was an "object
lesson" in this for everyone, she said. She looked pointedly at Francis,
who crossed his legs beneath the table.
"I came up at a time when
little could be done medically to overcome the little accidents of
nature," she said. "I had lovely skin and hair and I took full
advantage of them. I overcame my teeth with force of personality and bright
spirits - so successfully, in fact, that they became my 'beauty spot.' I think
you might even call them my 'charming trademark.' I wouldn't have traded them
for the world."
She distrusted doctors, she
explained at length, but when it became clear that gum problems would cost her
her teeth, she sought out one of the most renowned dentists in the Midwest, Dr.
Felix Bertl, a Swiss. Dr. BertI's "Swiss teeth" were very popular
with a certain class of people, Grandmother said, and he had a remarkable
practice.
Opera singers fearing that new
shapes in their mouths would affect their tone, actors and others in public
life came from as far away as San Francisco to be fitted.
Dr. Bertl could reproduce a
patient's natural teeth exactly and had experimented with various compounds and
their effect on resonance.
When Dr. Bertl had completed her
dentures, her teeth appeared just as they had before. She overcame them with
personality and lost none of her unique charm, she said with a spiky smile.
If there was an object lesson in
all this, Francis did not appreciate it until later; there would be no further
surgery for him until he could pay for it himself.
Francis could make it through
dinner because there was something he looked forward to afterward.
Queen Mother Bailey's husband
came for her each evening in the mule-drawn wagon he used to haul firewood. If
Grandmother was occupied upstairs, Francis could ride with them down the lane
to the main road.
He waited all day for the evening
ride: sitting on the wagon seat beside Queen Mother, her tall flat husband
silent and almost invisible in the dark, the iron tires of the wagon loud in
the gravel behind the jingle of the bits. Two mules, brown and sometimes muddy,
their cropped manes standing up like brushes, swishing their tails across their
rumps. The smell of sweat and boiled cotton doth, snuff and warm harness. There
was the smell of woodsmoke when Mr. Bailey had been clearing new ground and
sometimes, when he took his shotgun to the new ground, a couple of rabbits or
squirrels lay in the wagon box, stretched long as though they were running.
They did not talk on the ride
down the lane; Mr. Bailey spoke only to the mules. The wagon motion bumped the
boy pleasantly against the Baileys. Dropped off at the end of the lane, he gave
his nightly promise to walk straight back to the house and watched the lantern
on the wagon move away. He could hear them talking down the road. Sometimes
Queen Mother made her husband laugh and she laughed with him. Standing in the
dark, it was pleasant to hear them and know they were not laughing at him.
Later he would change his mind
about that . . .
# # #
Francis Dolarhyde's occasional
playmate was the daughter of a sharecropper who lived three fields away.
Grandmother let her come to play because it amused her now and then to dress
the child in the clothing Marian had worn when she was small.
She was a red-haired listless
child and she was too tired to play much of the time.
One hot June afternoon, bored with
fishing for doodlebugs in the chicken yard with straws, she asked to see
Francis' private parts.
In a corner between the chicken
house and a low hedge that shielded them from the lower windows of the house,
he showed her. She reciprocated by showing him her own, standing with her
pilled Cotton underwear around her ankles. As he squatted on his heels to see,
a headless chicken flapped around the corner, traveling on its back, flapping
up the dust. The hobbled girl hopped backward as it spattered blood on her feet
and legs.
Francis jumped to his feet, his
trousers still down, as Queen Mother Bailey came around the corner after the
chicken and saw them.
"Look here, boy," she
said calmly, "you want to see what's what, well now you see, so go on and
find yourselves something else to do. Occupy yourself with children's doings
and keep your clothes on. You and that child help me catch that rooster."
The children's embarrassment
quickly passed as the rooster eluded them.
But Grandmother was
watching from the upstairs window . . .
# # #
Grandmother watched Queen Mother
come back inside. The children went into the chicken house. Grandmother waited
five minutes, then came up on them silently. She flung open the door and found
them gathering feathers for headdresses.
She sent the girl home and led
Francis into the house.
She told him he was going back to
Brother Buddy's orphanage after she had punished him. "Go upstairs. Go to
your room and take your trousers off and wait for me while I get my
scissors."
He waited for hours in his room,
lying on the bed with his trousers off, clutching the bedspread and waiting for
the scissors. He waited through the sounds of supper downstairs and he heard
the creak and clop of the firewood wagon and the snort of the mules as Queen
Mother's husband came for her.
Sometime toward morning he slept,
and woke in starts to wait. Grandmother never came. Perhaps she had forgotten.
He waited through the routine of the days that followed, remembering many times
a day in a rush of freezing dread. He would never cease from waiting.
He avoided Queen Mother Bailey,
would not speak to her and wouldn't tell her why: be mistakenly believed that
she had told Grandmother what she saw in the chicken yard. Now he was convinced
that the laughter he heard while he watched the wagon Ian-tern diminish down
the road was about him. Clearly he could trust no one.
It was hard to lie still and go
to sleep when it was there to think about. It was hard to lie still on such a
bright night.
Francis knew that Grandmother was
right. He had hurt her so. He had shamed her. Everyone must know what he had
done - even as far away as St. Charles. He was not angry at Grandmother. He
knew that he Loved her very much. He wanted to do right.
He imagined that burglars were
breaking in and he protected Grandmother and she took back what she said.
"You're not a Child of the Devil after all, Francis. You are my good
boy."
He thought about a burglar
breaking in. Coming in the house determined to show Grandmother his private
parts.
How would Francis protect her? He
was too small to fight a big burglar.
He thought about it. There was
Queen Mother's hatchet in the pantry. She wiped it with newspaper after she
killed a chicken. He should see about the hatchet. It was his responsibility. He
would fight his fear of the dark. If he really Loved Grandmother, he should be
the thing to be afraid of in the dark. The thing for the burglar to be
afraid of.
He crept downstairs and found the
hatchet hanging on its nail. It had a strange smell, like the smell at the sink
when they were drawing a chicken. It was sharp and its weight was reassuring in
his hand.
He carried the hatchet to
Grandmother's room to be sure there were no burglars.
Grandmother was asleep. It was
very dark but he knew exactly where she was. If there was a burglar, he would
hear him breathing just as he could hear Grandmother breathing. He would know
where his neck was just as surely as he knew where Grandmother's neck was. It
was just below the breathing.
If there was a burglar, he would
come up on him quietly like this. He would raise the hatchet over his head with
both hands like this.
Francis stepped on Grandmother's
slipper beside the bed. The hatchet swayed in the dizzy dark and pinged against
the metal shade of her reading lamp.
Grandmother rolled over and made
a wet noise with her mouth. Francis stood still. His arms trembled from the
effort of holding up the hatchet. Grandmother began to snore.
The Love Francis felt almost
burst him. He crept out of the room. He was frantic to be ready to protect her.
He must do something. He did not fear the dark house now, but it was choking
him.
He went out the back door and
stood in the brilliant night, face upturned, gasping as though he could breathe
the light. A tiny disk of moon, distorted on the whites of his rolled-back
eyes, rounded as the eyes rolled down and was centered at last in his pupils.
The Love swelled in him
unbearably tight and he could not gasp it out. He walked toward the chicken
house, hurrying now, the ground cold under his feet, the hatchet bumping cold
against his leg, running now before he burst . . .
# # #
Francis, scrubbing himself at the
chicken-yard pump, had never felt such sweet and easy peace. He felt his way
cautiously into it and found that the peace was endless and all around him.
What Grandmother kindly had not
cut off was still there like a prize when he washed the blood off his belly and
legs. His mind was clear and calm.
He should do something about the
nightshirt. Better hide it under the sacks in the smokehouse.
# # #
Discovery of the dead chicken
puzzled Grandmother. She said it didn't look like a fox job.
A month later Queen Mother found
another one when she went to gather eggs. This time the head had been wrung
off.
Grandmother said at the dinner
table that she was convinced it was done for spite by some "sorry help I
ran off." She said she had called the sheriff about it.
Francis sat silent at his place,
opening and closing his hand on the memory of an eye blinking against his palm.
Sometimes in bed he held himself to be sure he hadn't been cut. Sometimes when
he held himself he thought he felt a blink.
# # #
Grandmother was changing rapidly.
She was increasingly contentious and could not keep household help. Though she
was short of housekeepers, it was the kitchen where she took personal charge,
directing Queen Mother Bailey to the detriment of the food. Queen Mother, who
had worked for the Dolarhydes all her life, was the only constant on the staff.
Red-faced in the kitchen heat,
Grandmother moved restlessly from one task to the next, often leaving dishes
half-made, never to be served. She made casseroles of leftovers while
vegetables wilted in the pantry.
At the same time, she became
fanatical about waste. She reduced the soap and bleach in the wash until the
sheets were dingy gray.
In the month of November she
hired five different black women to help in the house. They would not stay.
Grandmother was furious the
evening the last one left. She went through the house yelling. She came into
the kitchen and saw that Queen Mother Bailey had left a teaspoonful of flour on
the board after rolling out some dough.
In the steam and heat of the
kitchen a half-hour before dinner she walked up to Queen Mother and slapped her
face.
Queen Mother dropped her ladle,
shocked. Tears sprang into her eyes. Grandmother drew back her hand again. A
big pink palm pushed her away.
"Don't you ever do that.
You're not yourself, Mrs. Dolarhyde, but don't you ever do that."
Screaming insults, Grandmother
with her bare hand shoved over a kettle of soup to slop and hiss down through
the stove. She went to her room and slammed the door. Francis heard her cursing
in her room and objects thrown against the walls. She didn't come out again all
evening.
Queen Mother cleaned up the soup
and fed the old people. She got her few things together in a basket and put on
her old sweater and stocking cap. She looked for Francis but couldn't find him.
She was in the wagon when she saw
the boy sitting in the corner of the porch. He watched her climb down heavily
and come back to him.
"Possum, I'm going now. I
won't be back here. Sironia at the feed store, she'll call your mama for me.
You need me before your mama get here, you come to my house."
He twisted away from the touch on
his cheek.
Mr. Bailey clucked to the mules.
Francis watched the wagon lantern move away. He had watched it before, with a
sad and empty feeling since he understood that Queen Mother betrayed him. Now
he didn't care. He was glad. A feeble kerosene wagon light fading down the
road. It was nothing to the moon.
He wondered how it feels to kill
a mule.
# # #
Marian Dolarhyde Vogt did not
come when Queen Mother Bailey called her.
She came two weeks later after a
call from the sheriff in St Charles. She arrived in midafternoon, driving
herself in a prewar Packard. She wore gloves and a hat.
A deputy sheriff met her at the
end of the lane and stooped to the car window.
"Mrs. Vogt, your mother
called our office around noon, saying something about the help stealing. When I
come out here, you'll excuse me but she was talking out of her head and it
looked like things wasn't tended to. Sheriff thought he ought to get ahold of
y'all first, if you understand me. Mr. Vogt being before the public and
all."
Marian understood him. Mr. Vogt was
commissioner of public works in St. Louis now and was not in the party's best
graces.
"To my knowledge, nobody
else has saw the place," the deputy said.
Marian found her mother asleep.
Two of the old people were still sitting at the table waiting for lunch. One
woman was out in the backyard in her slip.
Marian telephoned her husband.
"How often do they inspect these places? . . . They must not have seen
anything . . . I don't know if any relatives have complained, I don't think
these people have any relatives . . . No. You stay away. I need some Negroes.
Get me some Negroes . . . and Dr. Waters. I'll take care of it."
The doctor with an orderly in
white arrived in forty-five minutes, followed by a panel truck bringing
Marian's maid and five other domestics.
Marian, the doctor, and the
orderly were in Grandmother's room when Francis came home from school. Francis
could hear his grandmother cursing. When they rolled her out in one of the
nursing-home wheelchairs, she was glassy-eyed and a piece of cotton was taped
to her arm. Her face looked sunken and strange without her teeth. Marian's arm
was bandaged too; she had been bitten.
Grandmother rode away in the
doctor's car, sitting in the backseat with the orderly. Francis watched her go.
He started to wave, but let his hand fall back to his side.
Marian's cleaning crew scrubbed
and aired the house, did a tremendous wash, and bathed the old people. Marian
worked alongside them and supervised a sketchy meal.
She spoke to Francis only to ask
where things were.
Then she sent the crew away and
called the county authorities. Mrs. Dolarhyde had suffered a stroke, she
explained.
It was dark when the welfare
workers came for the patients in a school bus. Francis thought they would take
him too. He was not discussed.
Only Marian and Francis remained
at the house. She sat at the dining-room table with her head in her hands. He
went outside and climbed a crabapple tree.
Finally Marian called him. She
had packed a small suitcase with his clothes.
"You'll have to come with
me," she said, walking to the car. "Get in. Don't put your feet on
the seat."
They drove away in the Packard
and left the empty wheelchair standing in the yard.
There was no scandal. The county
authorities said it was sure a shame about Mrs. Dolarhyde, she sure kept things
nice. The Vogts remained untarnished.
Grandmother was confined to a
private nerve sanatorium. It would be fourteen years before Francis went home
to her again.
# # #
"Francis, here are your
stepsisters and stepbrother," his mother said. They were in the Vogts'
library.
Ned Vogt was twelve, Victoria
thirteen, and Margaret nine. Ned and Victoria looked at each other. Margaret
looked at the floor.
Francis was given a room at the
top of the servants' stairs. Since the disastrous election of 1944 the Vogts no
longer employed an upstairs maid.
He was enrolled in Potter Gerard
Elementary School, within walking distance of the house and far from the
Episcopal private school the other children attended.
The Vogt children ignored him as
much as possible during the first few days, but at the end of the first week
Ned and Victoria came up the servants' stairs to call.
Francis heard them whispering for
minutes before the knob turned on his door. When they found it bolted, they
didn't knock. Ned said, "Open this door."
Francis opened it. They did not
speak to him again while they looked through his clothes in the wardrobe. Ned
Vogt opened the drawer in the small dressing table and picked up the things he
found with two fingers: birthday handkerchiefs with F.D. embroidered on them, a
capo for a guitar, a bright beetle in a pill bottle, a copy of Baseball Joe in
the World Series which had once been wet, and a get-well card signed "Your
classmate, Sarah Hughes."
"What's this?" Ned
asked.
"A capo."
"What's it for?"
"A guitar."
"Do you have a guitar?"
"No."
"What do you have it
for?" Victoria asked.
"My father used it."
"I can't understand you.
What did you say? Make him say it again, Ned."
"He said it belonged to his
father." Ned blew his nose on one of the handkerchiefs and dropped it back
in the drawer.
"They came for the ponies
today," Victoria said. She sat on the narrow bed. Ned joined her, his back
against the wall, his feet on the quilt.
"No more ponies," Ned
said. "No more lake house for the summer. Do you know why? Speak up, you
little bastard."
"Father is sick a lot and
doesn't make as much money," Victoria said. "Some days he doesn't go
to the office at all."
"Know why he's sick, you
little bastard?" Ned asked. "Talk where I can understand you."
"Grandmother said he's a
drunk. Understand that all right?"
"He's sick because of your
ugly face," Ned said.
"That's why people didn't
vote for him, too," Victoria said.
"Get out," Francis
said. When he turned to open the door, Ned kicked him in the back. Francis tried
to reach his kidney with both hands, which saved his fingers as Ned kicked him
in the stomach.
"Oh, Ned," Victoria
said. "Oh, Ned."
Ned grabbed Francis by the ears
and held him close to the mirror over the dressing table.
"That's why he's sick!"
Ned slammed his face into the mirror. "That's why he's sick!" Slam.
"That's why he's sick!" Slam. The mirror was smeared with blood and
mucus. Ned let him go and he sat on the floor. Victoria looked at him, her eyes
wide, holding her lower lip between her teeth. They left him there. His face
was wet with blood and spit. His eyes watered from the pain, but he did not
cry.
Rain in Chicago drums through the
night on the canopy over the open grave of Freddy Lounds.
Thunder jars Will Graham's
pounding head as he weaves from the table to a bed where dreams coil beneath
the pillow.
The old house above St. Charles,
shouldering the wind, repeats its long sigh over the hiss of rain against the
windows and the bump of thunder.
The stairs are creaking in the
dark. Mr. Dolarhyde is coming down them, his kimono whispering over the treads,
his eyes wide with recent sleep.
His hair is wet and neatly
combed. He has brushed his nails. He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration
like a brimming cup.
Film beside his projector. Two
subjects. Other reels are piled in the wastebasket for burning. Two left,
chosen from the dozens of home movies he has copied at the plant and brought
home to audition.
Comfortable in his reclining
chair with a tray of cheese and fruit beside him, Dolarhyde settles in to
watch.
The first film is a picnic from
the Fourth of July weekend. A handsome family; three children, the father
bull-necked, dipping into the pickle jar with his thick fingers. And the
mother.
The best view of her is in the
softball game with the neighbors' children. Only about fifteen seconds of her;
she takes a lead off second base, faces the pitcher and the plate, feet apart
ready to dash either way, her breasts swaying beneath her pullover as she leans
forward from the waist. An annoying interruption as a child swings a bat. The
woman again, walking back to tag up. She puts one foot on the boat cushion they
use for a base and stands hip-shot, the thigh muscle tightening in her locked
leg.
Over and over Dolarhyde watches
the frames of the woman. Foot on the base, pelvis tilts, thigh muscle tightens
under the cutoff jeans.
He freezes the last frame. The
woman and her children. They are dirty and tired. They hug, and a dog wags among
their legs.
A terrific crash of thunder
clinks the cut crystal in Grandmother's tall cabinet. Dolarbyde reaches for a
pear.
The second film is in several
segments. The title, The New House, is spelled out in pennies on a shirt
cardboard above a broken piggy bank. It opens with Father pulling up the
"For Sale" sign in the yard. He holds it up and faces the camera with
an embarrassed grin. His pockets are turned out.
An unsteady long shot of Mother
and three children on the front steps. It is a handsome house. A cut to the
swimming pool. A child, sleek-headed and small, pads around to the diving
board, leaving wet footprints on the tile. Heads bob in the water. A small dog
paddles toward a daughter, his ears back, chin high, and the whites of his eyes
showing.
Mother in the water holds to the
ladder and looks up at the camera. Her curly black hair has the gloss of pelt,
her bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, her legs wavy below the surface,
scissoring.
Night. A badly exposed shot
across the pool to the lighted hous; the lights reflected in the water.
Indoors and family fun. Boxes
everywhere, and packing materials. An old trunk, not yet stored in the attic.
A small daughter is trying on
Grandmother's clothes. She has on a big garden-party hat. Father is on the
sofa. He looks a little drunk. Now Father must have the camera. It is not quite
level. Mother is at the mirror in the hat.
The children jostle around her,
the boys laughing and plucking at the old finery. The girl watches her mother
coolly, appraising herself in time to come.
A close-up. Mother turns and
strikes a pose for the camera with an arch smile, her hand at the back of her
neck. She is quite lovely. There is a cameo at her throat.
Dolarhyde freezes the frame. He
backs up the film. Again and again she turns from the mirror and smiles.
Absently Dolarhyde picks up the
film of the softball game and drops it in the wastebasket.
He takes the reel from the
projector and looks at the Gateway label on the box: Bob Sherman, Star Route
7, Box 603, Tulsa, Okla.
An easy drive, too.
Dolarhyde holds the film in his
palm and covers it with his other hand as though it were a small living thing
that might struggle to escape. It seems to jump against his palm like a
cricket.
He remembers the jerkiness, the haste
at the Leeds house when the lights came on. He had to deal with Mr. Leeds
before turning on his movie lights.
This time he wants a smoother
progression. It would be wonderful to crawl in between the sleepers with the
camera going and snuggle up a little while. Then he could strike in the dark
and sit up between them happily getting wet.
He can do that with infrared
film, and he knows where to get some.
The projector is still on.
Dolarhyde sits holding the film between his hands while on the bright blank
screen other images move for him to the long sigh of the wind.
There is no sense of vengeance in
him, only Love and thoughts of the Glory to come; hearts becoming faint and
fast, like footsteps fleeing into silence.
Him rampant. Him rampant, filled
with Love, the Shermans opening to him.
The past does not occur to him at
all; only the Glory to come. He does not think of his mother's house. In fact,
his conscious memones of that time are remarkably few and indistinct.
Sometime in his twenties
Dolarhyde's memories of his mother's house sank out of sight, leaving a slick
on the surface of his mind.
He knew that he had lived there
only a month. He did not recall that he was sent away at the age of nine for
hanging Victoria's cat.
One of the few images he retained
was the house itself, lighted, viewed from the street in winter twilight as he
passed it going from Potter Gerard Elementary School to the house where he was
boarded a mile away.
He could remember the smell of
the Vogt library, like a piano just opened, when his mother received him there
to give him holiday things. He did not remember the faces at the upstairs
windows as he walked away, down the frozen sidewalk, the practical gifts
burning hateful under his arm; hurrying home to a place inside his head that
was quite different from St. Louis.
At the age of eleven his fantasy
life was active and intense and when the pressure of his Love grew too great,
he relieved it. He preyed on pets, carefully, with a cool eye to consequence.
They were so tame that it was easy. The authorities never linked him with the
sad little bloodstains soaked into the dirt floors of garages.
At forty-two he did not remember
that. Nor did he ever think about the people in his mother's house - his
mother, stepsisters, or stepbrother.
Sometimes he saw them in his
sleep, in the brilliant fragments of a fever dream; altered and tall, faces and
bodies in bright parrot colors, they poised over him in a mantis stance.
When he chose to reflect, which
was seldom, he had many satisfactory memories. They were of his military
service.
Caught at seventeen entering the
window of a woman's house for a purpose never established, he was given the
choice of enlisting in the Army or facing criminal charges. He took the Army.
After basic training he was sent
to specialist school in darkroom operation and shipped to San Antonio, where he
worked on medical-corps training films at Brooke Army Hospital.
Surgeons at Brooke took an
interest in him and decided to improve his face.
They performed a Z-plasty on his
nose, using ear cartilage to lengthen the columella, and repaired his lip with
an interesting Abbé flap procedure that drew an audience of doctors to the
operating theater.
The surgeons were proud of the
result. Dolarhyde declined the mirror and looked out the window.
Records at the film library show
Dolarhyde checked out many films, mainly on trauma, and kept them overnight.
He reenlisted in 1958 and in his
second hitch he found Hong Kong. Stationed at Seoul, Korea, developing film
from the tiny spotter planes the Army floated over the thirty-eighth parallel
in the late 1950's, he was able to go to Hong Kong twice on leave. Hong Kong
and Kowloon could satisfy any appetite in 1959.
Grandmother was released from the
sanatorium in 1961 in a vague Thorazine peace. Dolarhyde asked for and received
a hardship discharge two months before his scheduled separation date and went
home to take care of her.
It was a curiously peaceful time
for him as well. With his new job at Gateway, Dolarhyde could hire a woman to stay
with Grandmother in the daytime. At night they sat in the parlor together, not
speaking. The tick of the old clock and its chimes were all that broke the
silence.
He saw his mother once, at
Grandmother's funeral in 1970. He looked through her, past her, with his yellow
eyes so startlingly like her own. She might have been a stranger.
His appearance surprised his
mother. He was deep-chested and sleek, with her fine coloring and a neat
mustache which she suspected was hair transplanted from his head.
She called him once in the next
week and heard the receiver slowly replaced.
# # #
For nine years after
Grandmother's death Dolarhyde was untroubled and he troubled no one. His
forehead was as smooth as a seed. He knew that he was waiting. For what, he
didn't know.
One small event, which occurs to
everyone, told the seed in his skull it was Time: standing by a north window,
examining some film, he noticed aging in his hands. It was as though his hands,
holding the film, had suddenly appeared before him and he saw in that good
north light that the skin had slackened over the bones and tendons and his
hands were creased in diamonds as small as lizard scales.
As he turned them in the light,
an intense odor of cabbage and stewed tomatoes washed over him. He shivered
though the room was warm. That evening he worked out harder than usual.
A full-length mirror was mounted
on the wall of Dolarhyde's attic gym beside his barbells and weight bench. It
was the only mirror hanging in his house, and he could admire his body in it
comfortably because he always worked out in a mask.
He examined himself carefully
while his muscles were pumped up.
At forty, he could have competed
successfully in regional body-building competition. He was not satisfied.
Within the week he came upon the
Blake painting. It seized him instantly.
He saw it in a large, full-color
photograph in Time magazine illustrating a report on the Blake retrospective at
the Tate Museum in London. The Brooklyn Museum had sent The Great Red Dragon
and the Woman Clothed with the Sun to London for the show.
Time's critic said: "Few
demonic images in Western art radiate such a nightmarish charge of sexual
energy . . ." Dolarhyde didn't have to read the text to find that out.
He carried the picture with him
for days, photographed and enlarged it in the darkroom late at night. He was
agitated much of the time. He posted the painting beside his mirror in the
weight room and stared at it while he pumped. He could sleep only when he had
worked out to exhaustion and watched his medical films to aid him in sexual
relief.
He had known since the age of
nine that essentially he was alone and that he would always be alone, a
conclusion more common to the forties.
Now, in his forties, he was
seized by a fantasy life with the brilliance and freshness and immediacy of
childhood. It took him a step beyond Alone.
At a time when other men first
see and fear their isolation, Dolarhyde's became understandable to him: he was
alone because he was Unique. With the fervor of conversion he saw that if he
worked at it, if he followed the true urges he had kept down for so
long-cultivated them as the inspirations they truly were - he could Become.
The Dragon's face is not visible
in the painting, but increasingly Dolarhyde came to know how it looked.
Watching his medical films in the
parlor, pumped up from lifting, he stretched his jaw wide to hold in
Grandmother's teeth. They did not fit his distorted gums and his jaw cramped
quickly.
He worked on his jaw in private
moments, biting on a hard rubber block until the muscles stood out in his
cheeks like walnuts.
In the fall of 1979, Francis
Dolarhyde withdrew part of his considerable savings and took a three-month
leave of absence from Gateway. He went to Hong Kong and he took with him his
grandmother's teeth.
When he returned, red-haired
Eileen and his other fellow workers agreed that the vacation had done him good.
He was calm. They hardly noticed that he never used the employees' locker room
or shower anymore - he had never done that often anyway.
His grandmother's teeth were back
in the glass beside her bed. His own new ones were locked in his desk upstairs.
If Eileen could have seen him
before his mirror, teeth in place, new tattoo brilliant in the harsh gym light,
she would have screamed. Once.
There was time now; he did not
have to hurry now. He had forever. It was five months before he selected the
Jacobis.
The Jacobis were the first to
help him, the first to lift him into the Glory of his Becoming. The Jacobis
were better than anything, better than anything he ever knew.
Until the Leedses.
And now, as he grew in strength
and Glory, there were the Shermans to come and the new intimacy of infrared.
Most promising.
Francis Dolarhyde had to leave
his own territory at Gateway Film Processing to get what he needed.
Dolarhyde was production chief of
Gateway's largest division - home-movie processing - but there were four other
divisions.
The recessions of the 1970's cut
deeply into home moviemaking, and there was increasing competition from home
video recorders. Gateway had to diversify.
The company added departments
which transferred film to video-tape, printed aerial survey maps, and offered
custom services to small-format commercial filmmakers.
In 1979 a plum fell to Gateway.
The company contracted jointly with the Department of Defense and the
Department of Energy to develop and test new emulsions for infrared
photography.
The Department of Energy wanted
sensitive infrared film for its heat-conservation studies. Defense wanted it
for night reconnaissance.
Gateway bought a small company
next door, Baeder Chemical, in late 1979 and set up the project there.
Dolarhyde walked across to Baeder
on his lunch hour under a scrubbed blue sky, carefully avoiding the reflecting
puddles on the asphalt, Lounds's death had put him in an excellent humor.
Everyone at Baeder seemed to be
out for lunch.
He found the door he wanted at
the end of a labyrinth of halls. The sign beside the door said "Infrared
Sensitive Materials in Use. NO Safelights, NO Smoking, NO hot beverages."
The red light was on above the sign.
Dolarhyde pushed a button and, in
a moment, the light turned green. He entered the light trap and rapped on the
inner door.
"Come." A woman's
voice. Cool, absolute darkness. The gurgle of water, the familiar smell of D-76
developer, and a trace of perfume.
"I'm Francis Dolarhyde. I
came about the dryer."
"Oh, good. Excuse me, my
mouth's full. I was just finishing lunch."
He heard papers wadded and
dropped in a wastebasket.
"Actually, Ferguson wanted
the dryer," said the voice in the dark.
"He's on vacation, but I
know where it goes. You have one over at Gateway?"
"I have two. One is larger.
He didn't say how much room he has." Dolarhyde had seen a memo about the
dryer problem weeks ago.
"I'll show you, if you don't
mind a short wait."
"All right."
"Put your back against the
door" - her voice took on a touch of the lecturer's practiced tone -
"come forward three steps, until you feel the tile under your feet, and
there'll be a stool just to your left."
He found it. He was closer to her
now. He could hear the rustle of her lab apron.
"Thanks for coming
down," she said. Her voice was clear, with a faint ring of iron in it.
"You're head of processing over in the big building, right?"
"Um-humm."
"The same 'Mr. D.' who sends
the rockets when the requisitions are filed wrong?"
"The very one."
"I'm Reba McClane. Hope
there's nothing wrong over here."
"Not my project anymore. I
just planned the darkroom construction when we bought this place. I haven't
been over here in six months." A long speech for him, easier in the dark.
"Just a minute more and
we'll get you some light. Do you need a tape measure?"
"I have one." Dolarhyde
found it rather pleasant, talking to the woman in the dark. He heard the rattle
of a purse being rummaged, the click of a compact.
He was sorry when the timer rang.
"There we go. I'll put this
stuff in the Black Hole," she said.
He felt a breath of cold air,
heard a cabinet close on rubber seals and the hiss of a vacuum lock. A puff of
air, and fragrance touched him as she passed.
Dolarhyde pressed his knuckle
under his nose, put on his thoughtful expression and waited for the light.
The lights came on. She stood by
the door smiling in his approximate direction. Her eyes made small random
movements behind the closed lids.
He saw her white cane propped in
the corner. He took his hand away from his face and smiled.
"Do you think I could have a
plum?" he said. There were several on the counter where she had been
sitting.
"Sure, they're really
good."
Reba McClane was about thirty,
with a handsome prairie face shaped by good bones and resolution. She had a
small star-shaped scar on the bridge of her nose. Her hair was a mixture of
wheat and red-gold, cut in a pageboy that looked slightly out-of-date, and her
face and hands were pleasantly freckled by the sun. Against the tile and
stainless steel of the darkroom she was as bright as Fall.
He was free to look at her. His
gaze could move over her as freely as the air. She had no way to parry eyes.
Dolarhyde often felt warm spots,
stinging spots on his skin when he talked to a woman. They moved over him to
wherever he thought the woman was looking. Even when a woman looked away from
him, he suspected that she saw his reflection. He was always aware of
reflective surfaces, knew the angles of reflection as a pool shark knows the
banks.
His skin now was cool. Hers was
freckled, pearly on her throat and the insides of her wrists.
"I'll show you the room
where he wants to put it," she said. "We can get the measuring
done."
They measured.
"Now, I want to ask a
favor," Dolarhyde said.
"Okay."
"I need some infrared movie
film. Hot film, sensitive up around one thousand nanometers,"
"You'll have to keep it in
the freezer and put it back in the cold after you shoot."
"I know."
"Could you give me an idea
of the conditions, maybe I-"
"Shooting at maybe eight
feet, with a pair of Wratten filters over the lights." It sounded too much
like a surveillance rig. "At the zoo," he said. "In the World of
Darkness. They want to photograph the nocturnal animals."
"They must really be spooky
if you can't use commercial infra-red."
"Ummm-hmmmm."
"I'm sure we can fix you up.
One thing, though. You know a lot of our stuff is under the DD contract. Anything
that goes out of here; you have to sign for."
"Right."
"When do you need it?"
"About the twentieth. No
later."
"I don't have to tell you -
the more sensitive it is, the meaner it is to handle. You get into coolers, dry
ice, all that. They're screening some samples about four o'clock, if you want
to look. You can pick the tamest emulsion that'll do what you want."
"I'll come."
Reba McClane counted her plums
after Dolarhyde left. He had taken one.
Strange man, Mr. Dolarhyde. There
had been no awkward pause of sympathy and concern in his voice when she turned
on the lights. Maybe he already knew she was blind. Better yet, maybe he didn’t
give a damn.
That would be refreshing.
In Chicago, Freddy Lounds’s
funeral was under way. The National Tattler paid for the elaborate
service, rushing the arrangements so that it could be held on Thursday, the day
after his death. Then the pictures would be available for the Tattler
edition published Thursday night.
The funeral was long in the
chapel and it was long at the grave-side.
A radio evangelist went on and on
in fulsome eulogy. Graham rode the greasy swells of his hangover and tried to
study the crowd.
The hired choir at graveside gave
full measure for the money while the Tattler photographers’ motor-driven
cameras whizzed. Two TV crews were present with fixed cameras and
creepy-peepies. Police photographers with press credentials photographed the
crowd.
Graham recognized several
plainclothes officers from Chicago Homicide. Theirs were the only faces that
meant anything to him.
And there was Wendy of Wendy
City, Lounds’s girlfriend. She was seated beneath the canopy, nearest the
coffin. Graham hardly recognized her. Her blonde wig was drawn back in a bun
and she wore a black tailored suit.
During the last hymn she rose,
went forward unsteadily, knelt and laid her head on the casket, her arms
outstretched in the pall of chrysanthemums as the strobe lights flashed.
The crowd made little noise
moving over the spongy grass to the cemetery gates.
Graham walked beside Wendy. A
crowd of the uninvited stared at them through the bars of the high iron fence.
“Are you all right?” Graham
asked.
They stopped among the
tombstones. Her eyes were dry, her gaze level.
“Better than you,” she said. “Got
drunk, didn’t you?”
“Yep. Is somebody keeping an eye
on you?”
“The precinct sent some people
over. They’ve got plainclothes in the club. Lot of business now. More weirdos
than usual.”
“I’m sorry you had this. You did
. . . I thought you were fine at the hospital. I admired that.”
She nodded. “Freddy was a sport.
He shouldn’t have to go out that hard. Thanks for getting me in the room.” She
looked into the distance, blinking, thinking, eye shadow like stone dust on her
lids. She faced Graham. “Look, the Tattler’s giving me some money, you
figured that, right? For an interview and the dive at the grave-side. I don’t
think Freddy would mind.”
“He’d have been mad if you passed
it up.”
“That’s what I thought. They’re
jerks, but they pay. What it is, they tried to get me to say that I think you
deliberately turned this freak on to Freddy, chumming with him in that picture.
I didn’t say it. If they print that I did say it, well that’s bullshit.”
Graham said nothing as she
scanned his face.
“You didn’t like him, maybe – it
doesn’t matter. But if you thought this could happen, you wouldn’t have missed
the shot at the Fairy, right?”
“Yeah, Wendy, I’d have staked him
out.”
“Do you have anything at all? I
hear noise from these people and that’s about it.”
“We don’t have much. A few things
from the lab we’re following up. It was a clean job and he’s lucky.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Lucky.”
“Off and on.”
“Freddy was never lucky. He told
me he’d clean up on this. Big deals everywhere.”
“He probably would have, too.”
“Well look, Graham, if you ever,
you know, feel like a drink, I’ve got one.”
“Thanks.”
“But stay sober on the street.”
“Oh yes.”
Two policemen cleared a path for
Wendy through the crowd of curiosity-seekers outside the gate. One of the
gawkers wore a printed T-shirt reading “The Tooth Fairy Is a One-Night Stand.”
He whistled at Wendy. The woman beside him slapped his face.
A big policeman squeezed into the
280ZX beside Wendy and she pulled into the traffic. A second policeman followed
in an unmarked car.
Chicago smelled like a spent
skyrocket in the hot afternoon. Graham was lonely, and he knew why; funerals
often make us want sex – it’s one in the eye for death.
The wind rattled the dry stalks
of a funeral arrangement near his feet. For a hard second he remembered palm
fronds rustling in the sea wind. He wanted very much to go home, knowing that
he would not, could not, until the Dragon was dead.
The projection room at Baeder
Chemical was small – five rows of folding chairs with an aisle in the middle.
Dolarhyde arrived late. He stood
at the back with his arms folded while they screened gray cards, color cards,
and cubes variously lighted, filmed on a variety of infrared emulsions.
His presence disturbed Dandridge,
the young man in charge. Dolarhyde carried an air of authority at work. He was
the recognized darkroom expert from the parent company next door, and he was
known to be a perfectionist.
Dandridge had not consulted him
in months, a petty rivalry that had gone on since Gateway bought Baeder
Chemical.
“Reba, give us the development
dope on sample . . . eight,” Dandridge said.
Reba McClane sat at the end of a
row, a clipboard in her lap. Speaking in a clear voice, her fingers moving over
the clipboard in the semidarkness, she outlined the mechanics of the
development-chemicals, temperature and time, and storage procedures before and
after filming.
Infrared-sensitive film must be
handled in total darkness. She had done all the dark room work, keeping the
many samples straight by touch code and keeping a running record in the dark.
It was easy to see her value to Baeder.
The screening ran through
quitting time.
Reba McClane kept her seat as the
others were filing out. Dolarhyde approached her carefully. He spoke to her at
a distance while there were others in the room. He didn’t want her to feel
watched.
“I thought you hadn’t made it,”
she said.
“I had a machine down. It made me
late.”
The lights were on. Her clean
scalp glistened in the part of her hair as he stood over her.
“Did you get to see the 1000C
sample?”
“I did.”
“They said it looked all right.
It’s a lot easier to handle than the 1200 series. Think it’ll do?”
“It will.”
She had her purse with her, and a
light raincoat. He stood back when she came into the aisle behind her searching
cane. She didn’t seem to expect any help. He didn’t offer any.
Dandridge stuck his head back
into the room.
“Reba, dear, Marcia had to fly.
Can you manage?”
Spots of color appeared in her
cheeks. “I can manage very well, thank you, Danny.”
“I’d drop you, love, but I’m late
already. Say, Mr. Dolarhyde, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you-“
“Danny, I have a ride home.” She
held in her anger. The nuances of expression were denied her, so she kept her
face relaxed. She couldn’t control her color, though.
Watching with his cold yellow
eyes, Dolarhyde understood her anger perfectly; he knew that Dandridge’s limp
sympathy felt like spit on her cheek.
“I’ll take you,” he said, rather
late.
“No, but thank you.” She had
thought he might offer and had intended to accept. She wouldn’t have anybody
forced into it. Damn Dandridge, damn his fumbling, she’d ride the damned bus,
dammit. She had the fare and she knew the way and she could go anywhere she
fucking pleased.
She stayed in the women’s room
long enough for the others to leave the building. The janitor let her out.
She followed the edge of a
dividing strip across the parking lot toward the bus stop, her raincoat over
her shoulders, tapping the edge with her cane and feeling for the slight
resistance of the puddles when the cane swished through them.
Dolarhyde watched her from his
van. His feelings made him uneasy; they were dangerous in daylight.
For a moment under the lowering
sun, windshields, puddles, high steel wires splintered the sunlight into the
glint of scissors.
Her white cane comforted him. It
swept the light of scissors, swept scissors away, and the memory of her
harinlessness eased him. He was starting the engine.
Reba McClane heard the van behind
her. It was beside her now.
“Thank you for inviting me.”
She nodded, smiled, tapped along.
“Ride with me.”
“Thanks, but I take the bus all
the time.”
“Dandridge is a fool. Ride with
me . . . “ – what would someone say? – “for my pleasure.”
She stopped. She heard him get
out of the van.
People usually grasped her upper
arm, not knowing what else to do. Blind people do not like to have their
balance disturbed by a firm hold on their triceps. It is as unpleasant for them
as standing on wiggly scales to weigh. Like anyone else, they don’t like to be
propelled.
He didn’t touch her. In a moment
she said, “It’s better if I take your arm.”
She had wide experience of
forearms, but his surprised her fingers. It was as hard as an oak banister.
She could not know the amount of
nerve he summoned to let her touch him.
The van felt big and high.
Surrounded by resonances and echoes unlike those of a car, she held to the
edges of the bucket seat until Dolarhyde fastened her safety belt. The diagonal
shoulder belt pressed one of her breasts. She moved it until it lay between
them.
They said little during the
drive. Waiting at the red lights, he could look at her.
She lived in the left side of a
duplex on a quiet street near Washington University.
“Come in and I’ll give you a
drink.”
In his life, Dolarhyde had been
in fewer than a dozen private homes. In the past ten years he had been in four;
his own, Eileen’s briefly, the Leedses’, and the Jacobis’. Other people’s
houses were exotic to him.
She felt the van rock as he got
out. Her door opened. It was a long step down from the van. She bumped into him
lightly. It was like bumping into a tree. He was much heavier, more solid than
she would have judged from his voice and his footfalls. Solid and light on his
feet. She had known a Bronco linebacker once in Denver who came out to film a
United Way appeal with some blind kids.
Once inside her front door, Reba
McClane stood her cane in the corner and was suddenly free. She moved
effortlessly, turning on music, hanging up her coat.
Dolarhyde had to reassure himself
that she was blind. Being in a home excited him.
“How about a gin and tonic?”
“Tonic will be fine.”
“Would you rather have juice?”
“Tonic.”
“You’re not a drinker, are you?”
“No.”
“Come on in the kitchen.” She
opened the refrigerator. “How about . . . “ – she made a quick inventory with
her hands – “a piece of pie, then? Karo pecan, it’s dynamite.”
“Fine.”
She took a whole pie from the
icebox and put it on the counter.
Hands pointing straight down, she
spread her fingers along the edge of the pie tin until its circumference told
her that her middle fingers were at nine and three o’clock. Then she touched
her thumb-tips together and brought them down to the surface of the pie to
locate its exact center. She marked the center with a toothpick.
Dolarhyde tried to make
conversation to keep her from feeling his stare. “How long have you been at
Baeder?” No S’s in that one.
“Three months. Didn’t you know?”
“They tell me the minimum.”
She grinned. “You probably
stepped on some toes when you laid out the darkrooms. Listen, the techs love
you for it. The plumbing works and there are plenty of outlets. Two-twenty
wherever you need it.”
She put the middle finger of her
left hand on the toothpick, her thumb on the edge of the tin and cut him a
slice of pie, guiding the knife with her left index finger.
He watched her handle the bright
knife. Strange to look at the front of a woman as much as he liked. How often
in company can one look where he wants to look?
She made herself a stiff gin and
tonic and they went into the living room. She passed her hand over a floor
lamp, felt no heat, switched it on.
Dolarhyde ate his pie in three
bites and sat stiffly on the couch, his sleek hair shining under the lamp, his
powerful hands on his knees. She put her head back in her chair and propped her
feet on an ottoman.
“When will they film at the zoo?”
“Maybe next week.” He was glad he
had called the zoo and offered the infrared film: Dandridge might check.
“It’s a great zoo. I went with my
sister and my niece when they came to help me move in. They have the contact
area, you know. I hugged this llama. It felt nice, but talk about aroma,
boy . . . I thought I was being followed by a llama until I changed my shirt.”
This was Having a Conversation.
He had to say something or leave. “How did you come to Baeder?”
“They advertised at the Reiker
Institute in Denver where I was working. I was checking the bulletin board one
day and just happened to come across this job. Actually, what happened, Baeder
had to shape up their employment practices to keep this Defense contract. They
managed to pack six women, two blacks, two chicanos, an oriental, a paraplegic,
and me into a total of eight hirings. We all count in at least two categories,
you see.”
“You worked out well for Baeder.”
“The others did too. Baeder’s not
giving anything away.”
“Before that?” He was sweating a
little. Conversation was hard. Looking was good, though. She had good legs. She
had nicked an ankle shaving. Along his arms a sense of the weight of her legs,
limp.
“I trained newly blind people at
the Reiker Institute in Denver for ten years after I finished school. This is
my first job on the outside.”
“Outside of what?”
“Out in the big world. It was
really insular at Reiker. I mean, we were training people to live in the
sighted world and we didn’t live in it ourselves. We talked to each other too
much. I thought I’d get out and knock around a little. Actually, I had intended
to go into speech therapy, for speech-and-hearing-impaired children. I expect
I’ll go back to that, one of these days.” She drained her glass. “Say, I’ve got
some Mrs. Paul’s crab-ball miniatures in here. They’re pretty good. I shouldn’t
have served dessert first. Want some?”
“Um-hmmm.”
“Do you cook?”
“Um-hmmm.”
A tiny crease appeared in her
forehead. She went into the kitchen. “How about coffee?” she called.
“Uh-huh.”
She made small talk about grocery
prices and got no reply. She came back into the living room and sat on the
ottoman, her elbows on her knees.
“Let’s talk about something for a
minute and get it out of the way, okay?”
Silence.
“You haven’t said anything
lately. In fact, you haven’t said anything since I mentioned speech therapy.”
Her voice was kind, but firm. It carried no taint of sympathy. “I understand
you fine because you speak very well and because I listen. People don’t pay
attention. They ask me what? what? all the time. If you don’t want to
talk, okay. But I hope you will talk. Because you can, and I’m interested in
what you have to say.”
“Ummm. That’s good,” Dolarhyde
said softly. Clearly this little speech was very important to her. Was she
inviting him into the two-category club with her and the Chinese paraplegic? He
wondered what his second category was.
Her next statement was incredible
to him.
“May I touch your face? I want to
know if you’re smiling or frowning.” Wryly, now. “I want to know whether to
just shut up or not.”
She raised her hand and waited.
How well would she get around
with her fingers bitten off? Dolarhyde mused. Even in street teeth he could do
it as easily as biting off breadsticks. If he braced his heels on the floor,
his weight back on the couch, and locked both hands on her wrist, she could
never pull away from him in time. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, maybe leave
the thumb. For measuring pies.
He took her wrist between his
thumb and forefinger and turned her shapely, hard-used hand in the light. There
were many small scars on it, and several new nicks and abrasions. A smooth scar
on the back might have been a burn.
Too close to home.
Too early in his Becoming. She wouldn’t be there to look at anymore.
To ask this
incredible thing, she could know nothing personal about him. She had not
gossiped.
“Take my word that I’m smiling,”
he said. Okay on the S. It was true that he had a sort of smile which exposed
his handsome public teeth.
He held her wrist above her lap
and released it. Her hand settled to her thigh and half-closed, fingers
trailing on the cloth like an averted glance.
“I think the coffee’s ready,” she
said.
“I’m going.” Had to go. Home for
relief.
She nodded. “If I offended you, I
didn’t mean to.”
“No.”
She stayed on the ottoman,
listened to be sure the lock clicked as he left.
Reba MeClane made herself another
gin and tonic. She put on some Segovia records and curled up on the couch.
Dolarhyde had left a warm dent in the cushion. Traces of him remained in the
air – shoe polish, a new leather belt, good shaving lotion.
What an intensely private man.
She had heard only a few references to him at the office – Dandridge saying
“that son of a bitch Dolarhyde” to one of his toadies.
Privacy was important to Reba. As
a child, learning to cope after she lost her sight, she had had no privacy at
all.
Now, in public, she could never
be sure that she was not watched. So Francis Dolarhyde’s sense of privacy
appealed to her. She had not felt one ion of sympathy from him, and that was
good.
So was this gin.
Suddenly the Segovia sounded
busy. She put on her whale songs.
Three tough months in a new town.
The winter to face, finding curbs in the snow. Reba MeClane, leggy and brave,
damned self-pity. She would not have it. She was aware of a deep vein of
cripple’s anger in her and, while she could not get rid of it, she made it work
for her, fueling her drive for independence, strengthening her determination to
wring all she could from every day.
In her way, she was a hard one.
Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night-light; she knew
that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way everyone does: flat on her
back with a tube in her nose, wondering “Is this all?”
She knew that she would never
have the light, but there were things she could have. There were things to
enjoy. She had gotten pleasure from helping her students, and the pleasure was
oddly intensified by the knowledge that she would be neither rewarded nor
punished for helping them.
In making friends she was ever
wary of people who foster dependency and feed on it. She had been involved with
a few – the blind attract them, and they are the enemy.
Involved. Reba knew that she was
physically attractive to men – God knows enough of them copped a feel with
their knuckles when they grabbed her upper arm.
She liked sex very much, but
years ago she had learned something basic about men; most of them are terrified
of entailing a burden. Their fear was augmented in her case.
She did not like for a man to
creep in and out of her bed as though he were stealing chickens.
Ralph Mandy was coming to take
her to dinner. He had a particularly cowardly mew about being so scarred by
life that he was incapable of love. Careful Ralph told her that too often, and
it scalded her. Ralph was amusing, but she didn’t want to own him.
She didn’t want to see Ralph. She
didn’t feel like making conversation and hearing the hitches in conversations
around them as people watched her eat.
It would be so nice to be wanted
by someone with the courage to get his hat or stay as he damn pleased, and who
gave her credit for the same. Someone who didn’t worry about her.
Francis Dolarhyde – shy, with a
linebacker’s body and no bullshit. She had never seen or touched a cleft lip
and had no visual associations with the sound. She wondered if Dolarhyde
thought she understood him easily because “blind people hear so much better
than we do.” That was a common myth. Maybe she should have explained to him
that it was not true, that blind people simply pay more attention to what they
hear.
There were so many misconceptions
about the blind. She wondered if Dolarhyde shared the popular belief that the
blind are “purer in spirit” than most people, that they are somehow sanctified
by their affliction. She smiled to herself. That one wasn’t true either.
The Chicago police worked under a
media blitz, a nightly news “countdown” to the next full moon. Eleven days were
left.
Chicago families were frightened.
At the same time, attendance rose
at horror movies that should have died at the drive-ins in a week. Fascination
and horror. The entrepreneur who hit the punk-rock market with “Tooth Fairy”
T-shirts came out with an alternate line that said “The Red Dragon Is a
One-Night Stand.” Sales were divided about equally between the two.
Jack Crawford himself had to
appear at a news conference with police officials after the funeral. He had
received orders from Above to make the federal presence more visible; he did
not make it more audible, as he said nothing.
When heavily manned
investigations have little to feed on, they tend to turn upon themselves,
covering the same ground over and over, beating it flat. They take on the
circular shape of a hurricane or a zero.
Everywhere Graham went he found
detectives, cameras, a rush of uniformed men, and the incessant crackle of
radios. He needed to be still.
Crawford, ruffled from his news
conference, found Graham at nightfall in the quiet of an unused jury room on
the floor above the U.S. prosecutor’s office.
Good lights hung low over the
green felt jury table where Graham spread out his papers and photographs. He
had taken off his coat and tie and he was slumped in a chair staring at two
photographs.
The Leedses’ framed picture stood
before him and beside it, on a clipboard propped against a carafe, was a
picture of the Jacobis.
Graham’s pictures reminded
Crawford of a bullfighter’s folding shrine, ready to be set up in any hotel
room. There was no photograph of Lounds. He suspected that Graham had not been
thinking about the Lounds case at all. He didn’t need trouble with Graham.
“Looks like a poolroom in here,”
Crawford said.
“Did you knock ‘em dead?” Graham
was pale but sober. He had a quart of orange juice in his fist.
“Jesus.” Crawford collapsed in a
chair. “You try to think out there, it’s like trying to take a piss on the
train.”
“Any news?”
“The commissioner was popping
sweat over a question and scratched his balls on television, that’s the only
notable thing I saw. Watch at six and eleven if you don’t believe it.”
“Want some orange juice?”
“I’d just as soon swallow barbed
wire.”
“Good. More for me.” Graham’s
face was drawn. His eyes were too bright. “How about the gas?”
“God bless Liza Lake. There’re
forty-one Servco Supreme franchise stations in greater Chicago. Captain
Osborne’s boys swarmed those, checking sales in containers to people driving
vans and trucks. Nothing yet, but they haven’t seen all shifts. Servco has 186
other stations – they’re scattered over eight states. We’ve asked for help from
the local jurisdictions. It’ll take a while. If God loves me, he used a credit
card. There’s a chance.”
“Not if he can suck a siphon
hose, there isn’t.”
“I asked the commissioner not to
say anything about the Tooth Fairy maybe living in this area. These people are
spooked enough. If he told them that, this place would sound like Korea tonight
when the drunks come home.”
“You still think he’s close?”
“Don’t you? It figures, Will.”
Crawford picked up the Lounds autopsy report and peered at it through his
half-glasses.
“The bruise on his head was older
than the mouth injuries. Five to eight hours older, they’re not sure. Now, the
mouth injuries were hours old when they got Lounds to the hospital. They were
burned over too, but inside his mouth they could tell. He retained some
chloroform in his . . . hell, someplace in his wheeze. You think he was
unconscious when the Tooth Fairy bit him?”
“No. He’d want him awake.”
“That’s what I figure. All right,
he takes him out with a lick on the head – that’s in the garage. He has to keep
him quiet with chloroform until he gets him someplace where the noise won’t
matter. Brings him back and gets here hours after the bite.”
“He could have done it all in the
back of the van, parked way out somewhere,” Graham said.
Crawford massaged the sides of
his nose with his fingers, giving his voice a megaphone effect. “You’re
forgetting about the wheels on the chair. Bev got two kinds of carpet fuzz,
wool and synthetic. Synthetic’s from a van, maybe, but when have you ever seen
a wool rug in a van? How many wool rugs have you seen in someplace you can
rent? Damn few. Wool rug is a house, Will. And the dirt and mold were from a
dark place where the chair was stored, a dirt-floored cellar.”
“Maybe.”
“Now, look at this.” Crawford
pulled a Rand McNally road atlas out of his briefcase. He had drawn a circle on
the “United States mileage and driving time” map. “Freddy was gone a litfie
over fifteen hours, and his injuries are spaced over that time. I’m going to
make a couple of assumptions. I don’t like to do that, but here goes . . . What
are you laughing at?”
“I just remembered when you ran
those field exercises at Quantico when that trainee told you he assumed
something.”
“I don’t remember that. Here’s-“
“You made him write ‘assume’ on
the blackboard. You took the chalk and started underlining and yelling in his
face. ‘When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME both,’ that’s what you
told him, as I recall.”
“He needed a boot in the ass to
shape up. Now, look at this. Figure he had Chicago traffic on Tuesday
afternoon, going out of town with Lounds. Allow a couple of hours to fool with
Lounds at the location where he took him, and then the time driving back. He
couldn’t have gone much farther than six hours’ driving time out of Chicago.
Okay, this circle around Chicago is six hours’ driving time. See, it’s wavy
because some roads are faster than others.”
“Maybe he just stayed here.”
“Sure, but this is the farthest
away he could be.”
“So you’ve narrowed it down to
Chicago, or inside a circle covering Milwaukee, Madison, Dubuque, Peoria, St.
Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Detroit, to name a few.”
“Better than that. We know he got
a Tattler very fast Monday night, probably.”
“He could have done that in
Chicago.”
“I know it, but once you get out
of town the Tattlers aren’t available on Monday night in a lot of
locations. Here’s a list from the Tattler circulation department –
places Tattlers are air-freighted or trucked inside the circle on Monday
night. See, that leaves Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and
Detroit. They go to the airports and maybe ninety newsstands that stay open all
night, not counting the ones in Chicago. I’m using the field offices to check
them. Some newsie might remember an odd customer on Monday night.”
“Maybe. That’s a good move,
Jack.”
Clearly Graham’s mind was
elsewhere.
If Graham were a regular agent,
Crawford would have threatened him with a lifetime appointment to the
Aleutians. Instead he said, “My brother called this afternoon. Molly left his
house, he said.”
“Yeah.”
“Someplace safe, I guess?”
Graham was confident Crawford
knew exactly where she went.
“Willy’s grandparents.”
“Well, they’ll be glad to see the
kid.” Crawford waited.
No comment from Graham.
“Everything’s okay, I hope.”
“I’m working, Jack. Don’t worry
about it. No, look, it’s just that she got jumpy over there.”
Graham pulled a flat package tied
with string from beneath a stack of funeral pictures and began to pick at the
knot.
“What’s that?”
“It’s from Byron Metcalf, the
Jacobis’ lawyer. Brian Zeller sent it on. It’s okay.”
“Wait a minute, let me see.”
Crawford turned the package in his hairy fingers until he found the stamp and
signature of S. F. “Semper Fidelis” Aynesworth, head of the FBI’s explosives
section, certifying that the package had been fluoroscoped.
“Always check. Always check.”
“I always check, Jack.”
“Did Chester bring you this?”
“Yes.”
“Did he show you the stamp before
he handed it to you?”
“He checked it and showed me.”
Graham cut the string. “It’s
copies of all the probate business in the Jacobi estate. I asked Metcalf to
send it to me – we can compare with the Leeds stuff when it comes in.”
“We have a lawyer doing that.”
“I need it. I don’t know
the Jacobis, Jack. They were new in town. I got to Birmingham a month late, and
their stuff was scattered to shit and gone. I’ve got a feel for the Leedses. I
don’t for the Jacobis. I need to know them. I want to talk to people they knew
in Detroit, and I want a couple of days more in Birmingham.”
“I need you here.”
“Listen, Lounds was a straight
snuff. We made him mad at Lounds. The only connection to Lounds is one we made.
There’s a little hard evidence with Lounds, and the police are handling it.
Lounds was just an annoyance to him, but the Leedses and the Jacobis are what
he needs. We’ve got to have the connection between them. If we ever get him,
that’s how we’ll do it.”
“So you have the Jacobi paper to
use here,” Crawford said. “What are you looking for? What kind of thing?”
“Any damn thing, Jack. Right now,
a medical deduction.” Graham pulled the IRS estate-tax form from the package.
“Lounds was in a wheelchair. Medical. Valerie Leeds had surgery about six weeks
before she died – remember in her diary? A small cyst in her breast. Medical
again. I was wondering if Mrs. Jacobi had surgery too.”
“I don’t remember anything about
surgery in the autopsy report.”
“No, but it might have been
something that didn’t show. Her medical history was split between Detroit and
Birmingham. Something might have gotten lost there. If she had anything done,
there’ll be a deduction claimed and maybe an insurance claim.”
“Some itinerant orderly, you’re
thinking? Worked both places – Detroit or Birmingham and Atlanta?”
“If you spend time in a mental
hospital you pick up the drill. You could pass as an orderly, get a job doing
it when you got out,” Graham said.
“Want some dinner?”
“I’ll wait till later. I get dumb
after I eat.”
Leaving, Crawford looked back at
Graham from the gloom of the doorway. He didn’t care for what he saw. The
hanging lights deepened the hollows in Graham’s face as he studied with the
victims staring at him from the photographs. The room smelled of desperation.
Would it be better for the case
to put Graham back on the street? Crawford couldn’t afford to let him burn
himself out in here for nothing. But for something?
Crawford’s excellent
administrative instincts were not tempered by mercy. They told him to leave
Graham alone.
By ten P.M. Dolarhyde had worked
out to near-exhaustion with the weights, had watched his films and tried to
satisfy himself. Still he was restless.
Excitement bumped his chest like
a cold medallion when he thought of Reba McClane. He should not think of Reba
McClane.
Stretched out in his recliner,
his torso pumped up and reddened by the workout, he watched the television news
to see how the police were coming along with Freddy Lounds.
There was Will Graham standing
near the casket with the choir howling away. Graham was slender. It would be
easy to break his back. Better than killing him. Break his back and twist it
just to be sure. They could roll him to the next investigation.
There was no hurry. Let Graham
dread it.
Dolarhyde felt a quiet sense of
power all the time now.
The Chicago police department
made some noise at a news conference. Behind the racket about how hard they
were working, the essence was: no progress on Freddy. Jack Crawford was in the
group behind the microphones. Dolarhyde recognized him from a Tattler
picture.
A spokesman from the Tattler,
flanked by two bodyguards, said, “This savage and senseless act will only make
the Tattler’s voice ring louder.”
Dolarhyde snorted. Maybe so. It
had certainly shut Freddy up.
The news readers were calling him
“The Dragon” now. His acts were “what the police had termed the ‘Tooth Fairy
murders.’”
Definite progress.
Nothing but local news left. Some
prognathous lout was reporting from the zoo. Clearly they’d send him anywhere
to keep him out of the office.
Dolarhyde had reached for his
remote control when he saw on the screen someone he had talked with only hours
ago on the telephone: Zoo Director Dr. Frank Warfield, who had been so pleased
to have the film Dolarhyde offered.
Dr. Warfield and a dentist were
working on a tiger with a broken tooth. Dolarhyde wanted to see the tiger, but
the reporter was in the way. Finally the newsman moved.
Rocked back in his recliner,
looking along his own powerful torso at the screen, Dolarhyde saw the great
tiger stretched unconscious on a heavy work table.
Today they were preparing the
tooth. In a few days they would cap it, the oaf reported.
Dolarhyde watched them calmly
working between the jaws of the tiger’s terrible striped face.
“May I touch your
face?” said Miss Reba McClane.
He wanted to tell Reba McClane
something. He wished she had one inkling of what she had almost done. He wished
she had one flash of his Glory. But she could not have that and live. She must
live: he had been seen with her and she was too close to home.
He had tried to share with
Lecter, and Lecter had betrayed him. Still, he would like to share. He would
like to share with her a little, in a way she could survive.
“I know it’s political, you know
it’s political, but it’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway,” Crawford told
Graham. They were walking down the State Street Mall toward the federal office
building in the late afternoon. “Do what you’re doing, just write out the
parallels and I’ll do the rest.”
The Chicago police department had
asked the FBI’s Behavioral Science section for a detailed victim profile.
Police officials said they would use it in planning disposition of extra
patrols during the period of the full moon.
“Covering their ass is what
they’re doing,” Crawford said, waving his bag of Tater Tots. “The victims have
been affluent people, they need to stack the patrols in affluent neighborhoods.
They know there’ll be a squawk about that – the ward bosses have been fighting
over the extra manpower ever since Freddy lit off. If they patrol the
upper-middle-class neighborhoods and he hits the South Side, God help the city
fathers. But if it happens, they can point at the damned feds. I can hear it
now – ‘They told us to do it that way. That’s what they said do.”’
“I don’t think he’s any more
likely to hit Chicago than anywhere else,” Graham said. “There’s no reason to
think so. It’s a jerkoff. Why can’t Bloom do the profile? He’s a consultant to
Behavioral Science.”
“They don’t want it from Bloom,
they want it from us. It wouldn’t do them any good to blame Bloom. Besides,
he’s still in the hospital. I’m instructed to do this. Somebody on the Hill has
been on the phone with Justice. Above says do it. Will you just do it?”
“I’ll do it. It’s what I’m doing
anyway.”
“That’s what I know,” Crawford
said. “Just keep doing it.”
“I’d rather go back to
Birmingham.”
“No,” Crawford said. “Stay with
me on this.”
The last of Friday burned down
the west.
Ten days to go.
“Ready to tell me what kind of an
‘outing’ this is?” Reba McClane asked Dolarhyde on Saturday morning when they
had ridden in silence for ten minutes. She hoped it was a picnic.
The van stopped. She heard
Dolarhyde roll down his window.
“Dolarhyde,” he said. “Dr
Warfield left my name.”
“Yes, sir. Would you put this
under your wiper when you leave the vehicle?”
They moved forward slowly. Reba
felt a gentle curve in the road. Strange and heavy odors on the wind. An
elephant trumpeted.
“The zoo,” she said. “Terrific.”
She would have preferred a picnic. What the hell, this was okay. “Who’s Dr.
Warfield?”
“The zoo director.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“No. We did the zoo a favor with
the film. They’re paying back.”
“How?”
“You get to touch the tiger.”
“Don’t surprise me too much!”
“Did you ever look at a tiger?”
She was glad he could ask the
question. “No. I remember a puma when I was little. That’s all they had at the
zoo in Red Deer. I think we better talk about this.”
“They’re working on the tiger’s
tooth. They have to put him to sleep. If you want to, you can touch him.”
“Will there be a crowd, people
waiting?”
“No. No audience. Warfield, me, a
couple of people. TV’s coming in after we leave. Want to do it?” An odd urgency
in the question.
“Hell fuzzy yes, I do! Thank you
. . . that’s a fine surprise.”
The van stopped.
“Uh, how do I know he’s sound
asleep?”
“Tickle him. If he laughs, run
for it.”
The floor of the treatment room
felt like linoleum under Reba’s shoes. The room was cool with large echoes.
Radiant heat was coming from the far side.
A rhythmic shuffling of burdened
feet and Dolarhyde guided her to one side until she felt the forked pressure of
a corner.
It was in here now, she could smell
it.
A voice. “Up, now. Easy. Down.
Can we leave the sling under him, Dr. Warfield?”
“Yeah, wrap that cushion in one
of the green towels and put it under his head. I’ll send John for you when
we’ve finished.”
Footsteps leaving.
She waited for Dolarhyde to tell
her something. He didn’t.
“It’s in here,” she said.
“Ten men carried it in on a
sling. It’s big. Ten feet. Dr. Warfield’s listening to its heart. Now he’s
looking under one eyelid. Here he comes.”
A body damped the noise in front
of her.
“Dr. Warfield, Reba MeClane,”
Dolarhyde said.
She held out her hand. A large,
soft hand took it.
“Thanks for letting me come,” she
said. “It’s a treat.”
“Glad you could come.
Enlivens my day. We appreciate the film, by the way.”
Dr. Warfield’s voice was
middle-aged, deep, cultured, black. Virginia, she guessed.
“We’re waiting to be sure his
respiration and heartbeat are strong and steady before Dr. Hassler starts.
Hassler’s over there adjusting his head mirror. Just between us, he only wears
it to hold down his toupee. Come meet him. Mr. Dolarhyde?”
“You go ahead.”
She put out her hand to
Dolarhyde. The pat was slow in coming, light when it came. His palm left sweat
on her knuckles.
Dr. Warfield placed her hand on
his arm and they walked forward slowly.
“He’s sound asleep. Do you have a
general impression . . . ? I’ll describe as much as you like.” He stopped,
uncertain how to put it.
“I remember pictures in books
when I was a child, and I saw a puma once in the zoo near home.”
“This tiger is like a super
puma,” he said. “Deeper chest, more massive head, and a heavier frame and
musculature. He’s a four-year-old male Bengal. He’s about ten feet long, from
his nose to the tip of his tail, and he weighs eight hundred and fifteen
pounds. He’s lying on his right side under bright lights.”
“I can feel the lights.”
“He’s striking, orange and black
stripes, the orange is so bright it seems almost to bleed into the air around
him.” Suddenly Dr. Warfield feared that it was cruel to talk of colors. A
glance at her face reassured him.
“He’s six feet away, can you
smell him?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Dolarhyde may have told you,
some dimwit poked at him through the barrier with one of our gardener’s spades.
He snapped off the long fang on the upper left side on the blade. Okay, Dr.
Hassler?”
“He’s fine. We’ll give it another
minute or two.”
Warfield introduced the dentist
to Reba.
“My dear, you’re the first pleasant
surprise I’ve ever had from Frank Warfield,” Hassler said. “You might like to
examine this. It’s a gold tooth, fang actually.” He put it in her hand. “Heavy,
isn’t it? I cleaned up the broken tooth and took an impression several days
ago, and today I’ll cap it with this one. I could have done it in white of
course, but I thought this would be more fun. Dr. Warfield will tell you I never
pass up an opportunity to show off. He’s too inconsiderate to let me put an
advertisement on the cage.”
She felt the taper, curve, and
point with her sensitive battered fingers. “What a nice piece of work!” She
heard deep, slow breathing nearby.
“It’ll give the kids a start when
he yawns,” Hassler said. “And I don’t think it’ll tempt any thieves. Now for
the fun. You’re not apprehensive, are you? Your muscular gentleman over there
is watching us like a ferret. He’s not making you do this?”
“No! No, I want to.”
“We’re facing his back,” Dr.
Warfield said. “He’s just sleeping away about two and a half feet from you,
waist-high on a work table. Tell you what: I’ll put your left hand –you’re
right-handed aren’t you? – I’ll put your left hand on the edge of the table and
you can explore with your right. Take your time. I’ll be right here beside
you.”
“So will I,” Dr. Hassler said.
They were enjoying this. Under the hot lights her hair smelled like fresh
sawdust in the sun.
Reba could feel the heat on the
top of her head. It made her scalp tingle. She could smell her warm hair,
Warfield’s soap, alcohol and disinfectant, and the cat. She felt a touch of
faintness, quickly over.
She gripped the edge of the table
and reached out tentatively until her fingers touched tips of fur, warm from
the lights, a cooler layer and then a deep steady warmth from below. She
flattened her hand on the thick coat and moved it gently, feeling the fur slide
across her palm, with and against the lay, felt the hide slide over the wide
ribs as they rose and fell.
She gripped the pelt and fur
sprang between her fingers. In the very presence of the tiger her face grew
pink and she lapsed into blindisms, inappropriate facial movements she had
schooled herself against.
Warfield and Hassler saw her
forget herself and were glad. They saw her through a wavy window, a pane of new
sensation she pressed her face against.
As he watched from the shadows,
the great muscles in Dolarhyde’s back quivered. A drop of sweat bounced down
his ribs.
“The other side’s all business,”
Dr. Warfield said close to her ear. He led her around the table, her hand
trailing down the tail. A sudden constriction in Dolarhyde’s chest as her
fingers trailed over the furry testicles. She cupped them and moved on.
Warfield lifted a great paw and
put it in her hand. She felt the roughness of the pads and smelled faintly the
cage floor. He pressed a toe to make the claw slide out. The heavy, supple
muscles of the shoulders filled her hands.
She felt the tiger’s ears, the
width of its head and, carefully, the veterinarian guiding her, touched the
roughness of its tongue. Hot breath stirred the hair on her forearms.
Last, Dr. Warfield put the
stethoscope in her ears. Her hands on the rhythmic chest, her face upturned,
she was filled with the tiger heart’s bright thunder.
# # #
Reba McClane was quiet, flushed,
elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde once and said slowly,
"Thank you . . . very much. If you don't mind, I would dearly love a
martini."
# # #
"Wait here a minute," Dolarhyde
said as he parked in his yard.
She was glad they hadn't gone
back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. "Don't tidy up. Take me in
and tell me it's neat."
"Wait here."
He carried in the sack from the
liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and
stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn't sure what he was
doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn't look up the stairs.
He had to do something and he didn't know how. He should take her back home.
Before his Becoming, he would not
have dared any of this.
Now he realized he could do
anything. Anything. Anything.
He came outside, into the sunset,
into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane held on to his shoulders
until her foot touched the ground.
She felt the loom of the house.
She sensed its height in the echo of the van door closing.
"Four steps on the grass.
Then there's a ramp," he said.
She took his arm. A tremor
through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.
"You do have a ramp.
What for?"
"Old people were here."
"Not now, though."
"No."
"It feels cool and
tall," she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A clock
ticked far away. "It's a big house, isn't it? How many rooms?"
"Fourteen."
"It's old. The things in
here are old." She brushed against a fringed lampshade and touched it with
her fingers.
Shy Mr. Dolarhyde. She was
perfectly aware that it had excited him to see her with the tiger; he had
shuddered like a horse when she took his arm leaving the treatment room.
An elegant gesture, his arranging
that. Maybe eloquent as well, she wasn't sure.
"Martini?"
"Let me go with you and do
it," she said, taking off her shoes.
She flicked vermouth from her
finger into the glass. Two and a half ounces of gin on top, and two olives. She
picked up points of reference quickly in the house - the ticking clock, the hum
of a window air conditioner. There was a warm place on the floor near the
kitchen door where the sunlight had fallen through the afternoon.
He took her to his big chair. He
sat on the couch.
There was a charge in the air.
Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she found a place for her
drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.
To Dolarhyde the room seemed
changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had in the house, and now
the room was divided into her part and his.
There was the music, Debussy as
the light failed.
He asked her about Denver and she
told him a little, absently, as though she thought of something else. He
described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn't much need to talk.
In the silence while he changed
records, she said, "That wonderful tiger, this house, you're just full of
surprises, D. I don't think anybody knows you at all."
"Did you ask them?"
"Who?"
"Anybody."
"No."
"Then how do you know that
nobody knows me?" His concentration on the tongue-twister kept the tone of
the question neutral.
"Oh, some of the women from
Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy, were they curious. All
of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine."
"What do they want to
know?"
"They just wanted some juicy
gossip. When they found out there isn't any, they went away. They were just
fishing."
"And what did they
say?"
She had meant to make the women's
avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was not working out that way.
"They wonder about
everything," she said. "They find you very mysterious and
interesting. Come on, it's a compliment."
"Did they tell you how I
look?"
The question was spoken lightly,
very well done, but Reba knew that nobody is ever kidding. She met it head-on.
"I didn't ask them. But,
yes, they told me how they think you look. Want to hear it? Verbatim? Don't ask
if you don't." She was sure he would ask.
No reply.
Suddenly Reba felt that she was
alone in the room, that the place where he had stood was emptier than empty, a
black hole swallowing everything and emanating nothing. She knew he could not
have left without her hearing him.
"I think I'll tell
you," she said. "You have a kind of hard clean neatness that they
like. They said you have a remarkable body." Clearly she couldn't leave it
at that. "They say you're very sensitive about your face and that you
shouldn't be. Okay, here's the dippy one with the Dentine, is it Eileen?"
"Eileen."
Ah, a return signal. She felt
like a radio astronomer.
Reba was an excellent mimic. She
could have reproduced Eileen's speech with startling fidelity, but she was too
wise to mimic anyone's speech for Dolarhyde. She quoted Eileen as though she
read from a transcript.
"'He's not a bad-looking
guy. Honest to God I've gone out with lots of guys didn't look that good. I
went out with a hockey player one time - played for the Blues? - had a little
dip in his lip where his gum shrank back from his bridge? They all have that,
hockey players. It's kind of, you know, macho, I think. Mr. D.'s got the nicest
skin, and what I wouldn't give for his hair.' Satisfied? Oh, and she asked me
if you're as strong as you look."
"And?"
"I said I didn't know."
She drained her glass and got up. "Where the hell are you anyway,
D.?" She knew when he moved between her and a stereo speaker. "Aha.
Here you are. Do you want to know what I think about it?"
She found his mouth with her
fingers and kissed it, lightly pressing his lips against his clenched teeth.
She registered instantly that it was shyness and not distaste that held him
rigid.
He was astonished.
"Now, would you show me
where the bathroom is?"
She took his arm and went with
him down the hall.
"I can find my own way
back."
In the bathroom she patted her
hair and ran her fingers along the top of the basin, hunting toothpaste or
mouthwash. She tried to find the door of the medicine cabinet and found there
was no door, only hinges and exposed shelves. She touched the objects on them
carefully, leery of a razor, until she found a bottle. She took off the cap,
smelled to verify mouthwash, and swished some around.
When she returned to the parlor,
she heard a familiar sound - the whir of a projector rewinding.
"I have to do a little
homework," Dolarhyde said, handing her a fresh martini.
"Sure," she said. She
didn't know how to take it. "If I'm keeping you from working, I'll go.
Will a cab come up here?"
"No. I want you to be here.
I do. It's just some film I need to check. It won't take long."
He started to take her to the big
chair. She knew where the couch was. She went to it instead.
"Does it have a
soundtrack?"
"No."
"May I keep the music?"
"Um-hmmm."
She felt his attention. He wanted
her to stay, he was just frightened. He shouldn't be. All right. She sat down.
The martini was wonderfully cold
and crisp.
He sat on the other end of the
couch, his weight clinking the ice in her glass. The projector was still
rewinding.
"I think I'll stretch out
for a few minutes if you don't mind," she said. "No, don't move, I
have plenty of room. Wake me up if I drop off, okay?"
She lay on the couch, holding the
glass on her stomach; the tips of her hair just touched his hand beside his
thigh.
He flicked the remote switch and
the film began.
Dolarhyde had wanted to watch his
Leeds film or his Jacobi film with this woman in the room. He wanted to look
back and forth from the screen to Reba. He knew she would never survive that.
The women saw her getting into his van. Don't even think about that. The women
saw her getting into his van.
He would watch his film of the
Shermans, the people he would visit next. He would see the promise of relief to
come, and do it in Reba's presence, looking at her all he liked.
On the screen, The New House
spelled in pennies on a shirt cardboard. A long shot of Mrs. Sherman and the
children. Fun in the pool. Mrs. Sherman holds to the ladder and looks up at the
camera, bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, pale legs scissoring.
Dolarhyde was proud of his
self-control. He would think of this film, not the other one. But in his mind
he began to speak to Mrs. Sherman as he had spoken to Valerie Leeds in Atlanta.
You see me now, yes
That's how you feel
to see me, yes
Fun with old clothes. Mrs.
Sherruan has the wide hat on. She is before the mirror. She turns with an arch
smile and strikes a pose for the camera, her hand at the back of her neck.
There is a cameo at her throat.
Reba McClane stirs on the couch.
She sets her glass on the floor. Dolarhyde feels a weight and warmth. She has
rested her head on his thigh. The nape of her neck is pale and the movie light
plays on it.
He sits very still, moves only
his thumb to stop the film, back it up. On the screen, Mrs. Sherman poses
before the mirror in the hat. She turns to the camera and smiles.
You see me now, yes
That's how you feel
to see me, yes
Do you feel me now?
yes
Dolarhyde is trembling. His
trousers are mashing him so hard. He feels heat. He feels warm breath through
the cloth. Reba has made a discovery.
Convulsively his thumb works the
switch.
You see me now, yes
That's how you feel
to see me, yes
Do you feel this? yes
Reba has unzipped his trousers.
A stab of fear in him; he has
never been erect before in the presence of a living woman. He is the Dragon, he
doesn't have to be afraid.
Busy fingers spring him free.
OH.
Do you feel me now?
yes
Do you feel this yes
You do I know it yes
Your heart is loud
yes
He must keep his hands off Reba's
neck. Keep them off. The women saw them in the van. His hand is squeezing the
arm of the couch. His fingers pop through the upholstery.
Your heart is loud
yes
And fluttering now
It's fluttering now
It's trying to get
out yes
And now it's quick
and light and quicker and light and . . .
Gone.
Oh, gone.
Reba rests her head on his thigh
and turns her gleaming cheek to him. She runs her hand inside his shirt and
rests it warm on his chest.
"I hope I didn't shock
you," she said.
It was the sound of her living
voice that shocked him, and he felt to see if her heart was going and it was.
She held his hand there gently.
"My goodness, you're not
through yet, are you?"
A living woman. How bizarre.
Filled with power, the Dragon's or his own, he lifted her from the couch
easily. She weighed nothing, so much easier to carry because she wasn't limp.
Not upstairs. Not upstairs. Hurrying now. Somewhere. Quick. Grandmother's bed,
the satin comforter sliding under them.
"Oh, wait, I'll get them
off. Oh, now it's torn. I don't care. Come on. My God, man. That's so sweeeet.
Don't please hold me down, let me come up to you and take it."
# # #
With Reba, his only living woman,
held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt for the first time that
it was all right: it was his life he was releasing, himself past all mortality
that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet,
ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.
Beside her in the dark, he put
his hand on her and pressed her together gently to seal the way back. As she
slept, Dolarhyde, damned murderer of eleven, listened time and again to her
heart.
Images. Baroque pearls flying
through the friendly dark. A Very pistol he had fired at the moon. A great
firework he saw in Hong Kong called "The Dragon Sows His Pearls."
The Dragon.
He felt stunned, cloven. And all
the long night beside her he listened, fearful, for himself coming down the
stairs in the kimono.
She stirred once in the night,
searching sleepily until she found the bedside glass. Grandmother's teeth
rattled in it.
Dolarhyde brought her water. She
held him in the dark. When she slept again, he took her hand off his great
tattoo and put it on his face.
# # #
He slept hard at dawn.
Reba McClane woke at nine and
heard his steady breathing. She stretched lazily in the big bed. He didn't
stir. She reviewed the layout of the house, the order of rugs and floor, the
direction of the ticking clock. When she had it straight, she rose quietly and
found the bathroom.
After her long shower, he was
still asleep. Her torn underclothes were on the floor. She found them with her
feet and stuffed them in her purse. She pulled her cotton dress on over her
head, picked up her cane and walked outside.
He had told her the yard was
large and level, bounded by hedges grown wild, but she was cautious at first.
The morning breeze was cool, the
sun warm. She stood in the yard and let the wind toss the seed heads of the
elderberry through her hands. The wind found the creases of her body, fresh
from the shower. She raised her arms to it and the wind blew cool beneath her
breasts and arms and between her legs. Bees went by. She was not afraid of them
and they left her alone.
Dolarhyde woke, puzzled for an
instant because he was not in his room upstairs. His yellow eyes grew wide as
he remembered. An owlish turn of his head to the other pillow. Empty.
Was she wandering around the
house? What might she find? Or had something happened in the night? Something
to clean up. He would be suspected. He might have to run.
He looked in the bathroom, in the
kitchen. Down in the basement where his other wheelchair stood. The upper
floor. He didn't want to go upstairs. He had to look. His tattoo flexed as he
climbed the stairs. The Dragon glowed at him from the picture in his bedroom.
He could not stay in the room with the Dragon.
From an upstairs window he
spotted her in the yard.
"FRANCIS." He knew the voice came from his room. He knew
it was the voice of the Dragon. This new twoness with the Dragon disoriented
him. He first felt it when he put his hand on Reba's heart.
The Dragon had never spoken to
him before. It was frightening.
"FRANCIS, COME HERE."
He tried to shut out the voice
calling him, calling him as he hurried down the stairs.
What could she have found?
Grandmother's teeth had rattled in the glass, but he put them away when he
brought her water. She couldn't see anything.
Freddy's tape. It was in a
cassette recorder in the parlor. He checked it. The cassette was rewound to the
beginning. He couldn't remember if he had rewound it after he played it on the
telephone to the Tattler.
She must not come back in the
house. He didn't know what might happen in the house. She might get a surprise.
The Dragon might come down. He knew how easily she would tear.
The women saw her getting in his
van. Warfield would remember them together, Hurriedly he dressed.
Reba McClane felt the cool bar of
a tree trunk's shadow, and then the sun again as she wandered across the yard.
She could always tell where she was by the heat of the sun and the hum of the
window air conditioner. Navigation, her life's discipline, was easy here. She
turned around and around, trailing her hands on the shrubs and overgrown
flowers.
A cloud blocked the sun and she
stopped, not knowing in which direction she faced. She listened for the air
conditioner. It was off. She felt a moment of uneasiness, then clapped her
hands and heard the reassuring echo from the house. Reba flipped up her watch
crystal and felt the time. She'd have to wake D. soon. She needed to go home.
The screen door slammed.
"Good morning," she
said.
His keys tinkled as he came
across the grass.
He approached her cautiously, as
though the wind of his coming might blow her down, and saw that she was not
afraid of him.
She didn't seem embarrassed or
ashamed of what they had done in the night. She didn't seem angry. She didn't
run from him or threaten him. He wondered if it was because she had not seen
his private parts.
Reba put her arms around him and
laid her head on his hard chest. His heart was going fast.
He managed to say good morning.
"I've had a really terrific
time, D."
Really? What would
someone say back? "Good. Me too." That seemed all right.
Get her away from here.
"But I need to go home
now," she was saying. "My sister's coming by to pick me up for lunch.
You could come too if you like."
"I have to go the
plant," he said, modifying the lie he had ready, "I'll get my
purse."
Oh no. "I'll get
it."
Almost blind to his own true
feelings, no more able to express them than a scar can blush, Dolarhyde did not
know what had happened to him with Reba McClane, or why. He was confused,
spiked with new fright at being Two.
She threatened him, she did not
threaten him.
There was the matter of her
startling live movements of acceptance in Grandmother's bed.
Often Dolarhyde did not find out
what he felt until he acted. He didn't know how he felt toward Reba MeClane.
An ugly incident as he drove her
home enlightened him a little. Just past the Lindbergh Boulevard exit off
Interstate 70, Dolarhyde pulled into a Servco Supreme station to fill his van.
The attendant was a heavyset, sullen
man with muscatel on his breath. He made a face when Dolarhyde asked him to
check the oil.
The van was a quart low. The
attendant jammed the oil spout into the can and stuck the spout into the
engine.
Dolarhyde climbed out to pay.
The attendant seemed enthusiastic
about wiping the windshield; the passenger side of the windshield. He wiped and
wiped.
Reba McClane sat in the high
bucket seat, her legs crossed, her skirt riding up over her knee. Her white
cane lay between the seats.
The attendant started over on the
windshield. He was looking up her dress.
Dolarhyde glanced up from his
wallet and caught him. He reached in through the window of the van and turned
the wipers on high speed, batting the attendant's fingers.
"Hey, watch that." The
attendant got busy removing the oil can from the engine compartment. He knew he
was caught and he wore a sly grin until Dolarhyde came around the van to him.
"You son of a bitch."
Fast over the /s/.
"What the hell's the matter
with you?" The attendant was about Dolarhyde's height and weight, but he
had nowhere near the muscle. He was young to have dentures, and he didn't take
care of them.
Their greenness disgusted
Dolarhyde. "What happened to your teeth?" he asked softly.
"What's it to you?"
"Did you pull them for your boyfriend,
you rotten prick?" Dolarhyde stood too close.
"Get the hell away from
me."
Quietly, "Pig. Idiot. Trash.
Fool."
With a one-hand shove Dolarhyde
sent him flying back to slam against the van. The oil can and spout clattered
on the asphalt
Dolarhyde picked it up.
"Don't run. I can catch
you." He pulled the spout ftom the can and looked at its sharp end.
The attendant was pale. There was
something in Dolarhyde's face that he had never seen before, anywhere.
For a red instant Dolarhyde saw
the spout jammed in the man's chest, draining his heart. He saw Reba's face
through the windshield. She was shaking her head, saying something. She was
trying to find the handle to roll her window down.
"Ever had anything broken,
ass-eyes?"
The attendant shook his head
fast. "I didn't mean no offense, now. Honest to God."
Dolarhyde held the curved metal
spout in front of the man's face. He held it in both hands and his chest
muscles bunched as he bent it double. He pulled out the man's waistband and
dropped the spout down the front of his pants.
"Keep your pig eyes to
yourself." He stuffed money for the gas in the man's shirt pocket.
"You can run now," he said. "But I could catch you
anytime."
The tape came on Saturday in a
small package addressed to Will Graham, c/o FBI Headquarters, Washington. It
had been mailed in Chicago on the day Lounds was killed.
The laboratory and Latent Prints
found nothing useful on the cassette case or the wrapper.
A copy of the tape went to
Chicago in the afternoon pouch. Special Agent Chester brought it to Graham in
the jury room at midafternoon. A memo from Lloyd Bowman was attached:
Voiceprints verify this is Lounds. Obviously he was repeating dictation.
It's a new tape, manufactured in the last three months and never used before.
Behavioral Science is picking at the content. Dr. Bloom should hear it when
he's well enough - you decide about that.
Clearly the killer's trying to rattle you.
He'll do that once too often, I think.
A dry vote of confidence, much
appreciated.
Graham knew he had to listen to
the tape. He waited until Chester left.
He didn't want to be closed up in
the jury room with it. The empty courtroom was better - some sun came in the
tall windows. The cleaning women had been in and dust still hung in the
sunlight.
The tape recorder was small and
gray. Graham put it on a counsel table and pushed the button.
A technician's monotone:
"Case number 426238, item 814, tagged and logged, a tape cassette. This is
a rerecording."
A shift in the quality of the
sound.
Graham held on to the railing of
the jury box with both hands.
Freddy Lounds sounded tired and
frightened.
"I have had a great
privilege. I have seen . . . I have seen with wonder . . . wonder and awe . . . awe . . . the strength
of the Great Red Dragon."
The original recording had been
interrupted frequently as it was made. The machine caught the clack of the stop
key each time. Graham saw the finger on the key. Dragon finger.
"I lied about Him. All I
wrote was lies from Will Graham. He made me write them. I have . . . I have
blasphemed against the Dragon. Even so . . . the Dragon is merciful. Now I want
to serve Him. He . . . has helped me understand . . . His Splendor and I will
praise Him. Newspapers, when you print this, always capitalize the H in 'Him.'
"He knows you made me lie,
Will Graham. Because I was forced to lie, He will be more . . . more merciful
to me than to you, Will Graham.
"Reach behind you, Will
Graham . . . and feel for the small knobs on the top of your pelvis. Feel your
spine between them . . . that is the precise spot . . . where the Dragon will
snap your spine.
Graham kept his hands on the
railing. Damn if I'll feel. Did the Dragon not know the nomenclature of the
iliac spine, or did he choose not to use it?
"There's much . . . for you
to dread. From . . . from my own lips you'll learn a little more to
dread."
A pause before the awful
screaming. Worse, the blubbering lipless cry, "You goddanned astard you
romised."
Graham put his head between his
knees until the bright spots stopped dancing in front of his eyes. He opened
his mouth and breathed deep.
An hour passed before he could
listen to it again.
He took the recorder into the
jury room and tried to listen there. Too close. He left the tape recorder
turning and went back into the courtroom. He could hear through the open door.
"I have had a great
privilege . . ."
Someone was at the courtroom
door. Graham recognized the young clerk from the Chicago FBI office and
motioned for him to come in.
"A letter came for
you," the clerk said. "Mr. Chester sent me with it. He told me to be
sure and say the postal inspector fluoroscoped it."
The clerk pulled the letter out
of his breast pocket. Heavy mauve stationery. Graham hoped it was from Molly.
"It's stamped, see?"
"Thank you."
"Also it's payday." The
clerk handed him his check. On the tape, Freddy screamed.
The young man flinched.
"Sorry," Graham said.
"I don't see how you stand
it," the young man said.
"Go home," Graham said.
He sat in the jury box to read
his letter. He wanted some relief. The letter was from Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Dear Will,
A brief note of congratulations for the job you did on Mr. Lounds. I
admired it enormously. What a cunning boy you are!
Mr. Lounds often offended me with his ignorant drivel, but he did
enlighten me on one thing - your confinement in the mental hospital. My inept
attorney should have brought that out in court, but never mind.
You know, Will, you worry too much. You'd be so much more comfortable if
you relaxed with yourself.
We don't invent our natures, Will; they're issued to us along with our
lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?
I want to help you, Will, and I'd like to start by asking you this: When
you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Ganett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn't
the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn't you feel so bad because
killing him felt so good?
Think about it, but don't worry about it. Why shouldn't it feel good? It
must feel good to God - He does it all the time, and are we not made in His
image?
You may have noticed in the paper yesterday, God dropped a church roof
on thirty-four of His worshipers in Texas Wednesday night - just as they were
groveling through a hymn. Don't you think that felt good?
Thirty-four. He'd let you have Hobbs.
He got 160 Filipinos in one plane crash last week - He'll let you have
measly Hobbs. He won't begrudge you one measly murder. Two now. That's all
right.
Watch the papers. God always stays ahead.
Best,
Hannibal
Lecter, M.D.
Graham knew that Lecter was dead
wrong about Hobbs, but for a half-second he wondered if Lecter might be a
little bit right in the case of Freddy Lounds. The enemy inside Graham agreed
with any accusation.
He had put his hand on Freddy's
shoulder in the Tattler photograph to establish that he really had told
Freddy those insulting things about the Dragon. Or had he wanted to put Freddy
at risk, just a little? He wondered.
The certain knowledge that he
would not knowingly miss a chance at the Dragon reprieved him.
"I'm just about worn out
with you crazy sons of bitches," Graham said aloud.
He wanted a break. He called
Molly, but no one answered the telephone at Willy's grandparents' house.
"Probably out in their damned motorhome," he mumbled.
He went out for coffee, partly to
assure himself that he was not hiding in the jury room.
In the window of a jewelry store
he saw a delicate antique gold bracelet. It cost him most of his paycheck. He
had it wrapped and stamped for mailing. Only when he was sure he was alone at
the mail drop did he address it to Molly in Oregon. Graham did not realize, as
Molly did, that he gave presents when he was angry.
He didn't want to go back to his
jury room and work, but he had to. The thought of Valerie Leeds spurred him.
I'm sorry I can't
come to the phone nght now, Valerie Leeds had said.
He wished that he had known her.
He wished . . . Useless, childish thought.
Graham was tired, selfish,
resentful, fatigued to a child-minded state in which his standards of
measurement were the first ones he learned; where the direction
"north" was Highway 61 and "six feet" was forever the
length of his father.
He made himself settle down to
the minutely detailed victim profile he was putting together from a fan of
reports and his own observations.
Affluence. That was one parallel.
Both families were affluent. Odd that Valerie Leeds saved money on panty hose.
Graham wondered if she had been a
poor child. He thought so; her own children were a little too well turned out.
Graham had been a poor child,
following his father from the boatyards in Biloxi and Greenville to the lake
boats on Erie. Always the new boy at school, always the stranger. He had a
half-buried grudge against the rich.
Valerie Leeds might have been a
poor child. He was tempted to watch his film of her again. He could do it in
the courtroom. No. The Leedses were not his immediate problem. He knew the
Leedses. He did not know the Jacobis.
His lack of intimate knowledge
about the Jacobis plagued him. The house fire in Detroit had taken everything -
family albums, probably diaries too.
Graham tried to know them through
the objects they wanted, bought and used. That was all he had.
The Jacobi probate file was three
inches thick, and a lot of it was lists of possessions -a new household
outfitted since the move to Birmingham. Look at all this skit. It was all
insured, listed with serial numbers as the insurance companies required. Trust
a man who has been burned out to buy plenty of insurance for the next time.
The attorney, Byron Metcalf, had
sent him carbons instead of Xerox copies of the insurance declarations. The
carbons were fuzzy and hard to read.
Jacobi had a ski boat, Leeds had
a ski boat. Jacobi had a three-wheeler, Leeds had a trail bike. Graham licked
his thumb and turned the page.
The fourth item on the second
page was a Chinon Pacific movie projector.
Graham stopped. How had he missed
it? He had looked through every crate on every pallet in the Birmingham
warehouse, alert for anything that would give him an intimate view of the
Jacobis.
Where was the projector? He could
cross-check this insurance declaration against the inventory Byron Metcalf had
prepared as executor when he stored the Jacobis' things. The items had been
checked off by the warehouse supervisor who signed the storage contract.
It took fifteen minutes to go
down the list of stored items. No projector, no camera, no film.
Graham leaned back in his chair
and stared at the Jacobis smiling from the picture propped before him.
What the hell did you
do with it?
Was it stolen?
Did the killer steal
it?
If the killer stole
it, did he fence it?
Dear God, give me a
traceable fence.
Graham wasn't tired anymore. He
wanted to know if anything else was missing. He looked for an hour, comparing
the warehouse storage inventory with the insurance declarations. Everything was
accounted for except the small precious items. They should all be on Byron
Metcalf's own lockbox list of things he had put in the bank vault in
Birmingham.
All of them were on the list.
Except two.
"Crystal oddment box,
4" X 3", sterling silver lid" appeared on the insurance
declaration, but was not in the lockbox. "Sterling picture frame, 9 x 11
inches, worked with vines and flowers" wasn't in the vault either.
Stolen? Mislaid? They were small
items, easily concealed. Usually fenced silver is melted down immediately. It
would be hard to trace. But movie equipment had serial numbers inside and out.
It could be traced.
Was the killer the thief?
As he stared at his stained
photograph of the Jacobis, Graham felt the sweet jolt of a new connection. But
when he saw the answer whole it was seedy and disappointing and small.
There was a telephone in the jury
room. Graham called Birmingham Homicide. He got the three-to-eleven watch
commander.
"In the Jacobi case I
noticed you kept an in-and-out log at the house after it was sealed off,
right?"
"Let me get somebody to
look," the watch commander said.
Graham knew they kept one. It was
good procedure to record every person entering or leaving a murder scene, and
Graham had been pleased to see that Birmingham did it. He waited five minutes
before a clerk picked up the telephone.
"Okay, in-and-out, what do
you want to know?"
"Is Niles Jacobi, son of the
deceased - is he on it?"
"Umm-hmmm, yep. July 2,
seven P.M. He had permission to get personal items."
"Did he have a suitcase,
does it say?"
"Nope. Sorry."
Byron Metcalf's voice was husky
and his breathing heavy when he answered the telephone. Graham wondered what he
was doing.
"Hope I didn't disturb
you."
"What can I do for you,
Will?"
"I need a little help with
Niles Jacobi."
"What's he done now?"
"I think he lifted a few
things out of the Jacobi house after they were killed."
"Urnmm."
"There's a sterling picture
frame missing from your lockbox inventory. When I was in Birmingham I picked up
a loose photograph of the family in Niles's dormitory room. It used to be in a
frame - I can see the impression the mat left on it."
"The little bastard. I gave
permission for him to get his clothes and some books he needed," Metcalf
said.
"Niles has expensive
friendships. This is mainly what I'm after, though - a movie projector and a
movie camera are missing too. I want to know if he got them. Probably he did,
but if he didn't, maybe the killer got them. In that case we need to get the
serial numbers out to the hock shops. We need to put 'em on the national hot
sheet. The frame's probably melted down by now."
"He'll think 'frame' when I
get through with him."
"One thing - if Niles took
the projector, he might have kept the film. He couldn't get anything for it. I
want the film. I need to see it. If you come at him from the front, he'll deny
everything and flush the film if he has any."
"Okay," Metcalf said.
"His car title reverted to the estate. I'm executor, so I can search it
without a warrant. My friend the judge won't mind papering his room for me.
I'll call you."
Graham went back to work.
Affluence. Put affluence in the
profile the police would use.
Graham wondered if Mrs. Leeds and
Mrs. Jacobi ever did their marketing in tennis clothes. That was a fashionable
thing to do in some areas. It was a dumb thing to do in some areas because it
was doubly provocative - arousing class resentment and lust at the same time.
Graham imagined them pushing
grocery carts, short pleated skirts brushing the brown thighs, the little balls
on their sweat socks winking - passing the husky man with the barracuda eyes
who was buying cold lunch meat to gnaw in his car.
How many families were there with
three children and a pet, and only common locks between them and the Dragon as
they slept?
When Graham pictured possible
victims, he saw clever, successful people in graceful houses.
But the next person to confront
the Dragon did not have children or a pet, and there was no grace in his house.
The next person to confront the Dragon was Francis Dolarhyde.
The thump of weights on the attic
floor carried through the old house.
Dolarhyde was lifting, straining,
pumping more weight than he had ever lifted. His costume was different;
sweatpants covered his tattoo. The sweatshirt hung over The Great Red Dragon
and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. The kimono hung on the wall like the
shed skin of a tree snake. It covered the mirror.
Dolarhyde wore no mask,
Up. Two hundred and eighty pounds
from the floor to his chest in one heave. Now over his head.
"WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?"
Startled by the voice, he nearly
dropped the weight, swayed beneath it. Down. The plates thudded and clanked on
the floor.
He turned, his great arms
hanging, and stared in the direction of the voice.
"WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?"
It seemed to come from behind the
sweatshirt, but its rasp and volume hurt his throat.
"WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?"
He knew who spoke and he was
frightened. From the beginning, he and the Dragon had been one. He was Becoming
and the Dragon was his higher self. Their bodies, voices, wills were one,
Not now. Not since Reba. Don't
think Reba.
"WHO IS ACCEPTABLE?" the Dragon asked.
"Mrs . . . erhman -
Sherman." It was hard for Dolarhyde to say.
"SPEAK UP. I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU. WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?"
Dolarhyde, his face set, turned
to the barbell. Up. Over his head. Much harder this time.
"Mrs. . . . erhman wet in
the water."
"YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR LITTLE BUDDY, DON'T YOU? YOU WANT HER TO BE
YOUR LITTLE BUDDY, DON'T YOU?"
The weight came down with a thud.
"I on't have a li'l . . .
buddy." With the fear his speech was failing. He had to occlude his
nostrils with his upper lip.
"A STUPID LIE." The Dragon's voice was strong and clear. He
said the /s/ without effort. "YOU
FORGET THE BECOMING. PREPARE FOR THE SHERMANS. LIFT THE WEIGHT."
Dolarhyde seized the barbell and
strained. His mind strained with his body. Desperately he tried to think of the
Shermans. He forced himself to think of the weight of Mrs. Sherman in his arms.
Mrs. Sherman was next. It was Mrs. Sherman. He was fighting Mr. Sherman in the
dark. Holding him down until loss of blood made Sherman's heart quiver like a
bird. It was the only heart he heard. He didn't hear Reba's heart. He didn't.
Fear leeched his strength. He got
the weight up to his thighs, could not make the turn up to his chest. He
thought of the Shermans ranged around him, eyes wide, as he took the Dragon's
due. It was no good. It was hollow, empty. The weight thudded down.
"NOT ACCEPTABLE."
"Mrs . . ."
"YOU CAN'T EVEN SAY 'MRS. SHERMAN.' YOU NEVER INTEND TO TAKE THE
SHERMANS. YOU WANT REBA MCCLANE. YOU WANT HER TO BE YOUR LITTLE BUDDY, DON'T
YOU? YOU WANT TO BE 'FRIENDS'."
"No."
"LIE!"
"Nyus mhor a niddow
wyow."
"JUST FOR A LITTLE WHILE? YOU SNIVELING HARELIP, WHO WOULD BE
FRIENDS WITH YOU? COME HERE. I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU ARE."
Dolarhyde did not move.
"I'VE NEVER SEEN A CHILD AS DISGUSTING AND DIRTY AS YOU. COME HERE."
He went.
"TAKE DOWN THE SWEATSHIRT."
He took it down.
"LOOK AT ME."
The Dragon glowed from the wall.
"TAKE DOWN THE KIMONO. LOOK IN THE MIRROR."
He looked. He could not help
himself or turn his face from the scalding light. He saw himself drool.
"LOOK AT YOURSELF. I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU A SURPRISE FOR YOUR LITTLE
BUDDY. TAKE OFF THAT RAG."
Dolarhyde's hands fought each
other at the waistband of the sweatpants. The sweatpants tore. He stripped them
away from him with his right hand, held the rags to him with his left.
His right hand snatched the rags
away from his trembling, failing left. He threw them into the corner and fell
back on the mat, curling on himself like a lobster split live. He hugged
himself and groaned, breathing hard, his tattoo brilliant in the harsh gym lights.
"I'VE NEVER SEEN A CHILD AS DISGUSTING AND DIRTY AS YOU. GO GET
THEM."
"aaaymah."
"GET THEM."
He padded from the room and
returned with the Dragon's teeth.
"PUT THEM IN YOUR PALMS. LOCK YOUR FINGERS AND SQUEEZE MY TEETH
TOGETHER."
Dolarhyde's pectoral muscles
bunched.
"YOU KNOW HOW THEY CAN SNAP. NOW HOLD THEM UNDER YOUR BELLY. HOLD
YOURSELF BETWEEN THE TEETH."
"no."
"DO IT. . . NOW LOOK."
The teeth were beginning to hurt
him. Spit and tears fell on his chest.
"mleadse."
"YOU ARE OFFAL LEFT BEHIND IN THE BECOMING. YOU ARE OFFAL AND I
WILL NAME YOU. YOU ARE CUNT FACE. SAY IT."
"i am cunt face." He
occluded his nostrils with his lip to say the words.
"SOON I WILL BE CLEANSED OF YOU," the Dragon said
effortlessly. "WILL THAT BE
GOOD?"
"good."
"WHO WILL BE NEXT WHEN IT IS TIME?"
"mrs. . . . ehrman . .
."
Sharp pain shot through
Dolarhyde, pain and terrible fear.
"I'LL TEAR IT OFF."
"reba. reba. i'll give you
reba." Already his speech was improving.
"YOU'LL GIVE ME NOTHING. SHE IS MINE. THEY ARE ALL MINE. REBA
MCCLANE AND THEN THE SHERMANS."
"reba and then the shermans.
the law will know."
"I HAVE PROVIDED FOR THAT DAY. DO YOU DOUBT IT?"
"no."
"WHO ARE YOU?"
"cunt face."
"YOU MAY PUT AWAY MY TEETH. YOU PITIFUL WEAK HARELIP, YOU'D KEEP
YOUR LITTLE BUDDY FROM ME, WOULD YOU? I'LL TEAR HER APART AND RUB THE PIECES IN
YOUR UGLY FACE. I'LL HANG YOU WITH HER LARGE INTESTINE IF YOU OPPOSE ME. YOU
KNOW I CAN. PUT THREE HUNDRED POUNDS ON THE BAR."
Dolarhyde added the plates to the
bar. He had never lifted as much as 280 until today.
"LIFT IT."
If he were not as strong as the
Dragon, Reba would die. He knew it. He strained until the room turned red
before his bulging eyes.
"i can't."
"NO YOU CAN'T. BUT I CAN."
Dolarhyde gripped the bar. It
bowed as the weight rose to his shoulders. UP. Above his head easily. "GOOD-BYE, CUNT FACE," he said, proud Dragon,
quivering in the light.
Francis Dolarhyde never got to
work on Monday morning.
He started from his house exactly
on time, as he always did. His appearance was impeccable, his driving precise.
He put on his dark glasses when he made the turn at the Missouri River bridge
and drove into the morning sun.
His Styrofoam cooler squeaked as
it jiggled against the passenger seat He leaned across and set it on the floor,
remembering that he must pick up the dry ice and get the film from . . .
Crossing the Missouri channel
now, moving water under him. He looked at the whitecaps on the sliding river
and suddenly felt that he was sliding and the river was still. A strange,
disjointed, collapsing feeling flooded him. He let up on the accelerator.
The van slowed in the outside
lane and stopped. Traffic behind him was stacking up, honking. He didn't hear
it.
He sat, sliding slowly northward
over the still river, facing the morning sun. Tears leaked from beneath his
sunglasses and fell hot on his forearms.
Someone was pecking on the
window. A driver, face early-morning pale and puffed with sleep, had gotten out
of a car behind him. The driver was yelling something through the window.
Dolarhyde looked at the man.
Flashing blue lights were coming from the other end of the bridge. He knew he
should drive. He asked his body to step on the gas, and it did. The man beside
the van skipped backward to save his feet.
Dolarhyde pulled into the parking
lot of a big motel near the U.S. 270 interchange. A school bus was parked in
the lot, the bell of a tuba leaning against its back window.
Dolarhyde wondered if he was
supposed to get on the bus with the old people.
No, that wasn't it, He looked
around for his mother's Packard.
"Get in. Don't put your
feet on the seat," his mother said.
That wasn't it either.
He was in a motel parking lot on
the west side of St. Louis and he wanted to be able to Choose and he couldn't.
In six days, if he could wait
that long, he would kill Reba McClane. He made a sudden high sound through his
nose.
Maybe the Dragon would be willing
to take the Shermans first and wait another moon.
No. He wouldn't.
Reba McClane didn't know about
the Dragon. She thought she was with Francis Dolarhyde. She wanted to put her
body on Francis Dolarhyde. She welcomed Francis Dolarhyde in Grandmother's bed.
"I've had a really
terrific time, D.," Reba McClane said in the yard.
Maybe she liked Francis Dolarhyde.
That was a perverted, despicable thing for a woman to do. He understood that he
should despise her for it, but oh God it was good.
Reba McClane was guilty of liking
Francis Dolarhyde. Demonstrably guilty.
If it weren't for the power of
his Becoming, if it weren't for the Dragon, he could never have taken her to
his house. He would not have been capable of sex. Or would he?
"My God, man. That's so
sweeeet."
That's what she said. She said
"man."
The breakfast crowd was coming
out of the motel, passing his van. Their idle glances walked on him with many
tiny feet.
He needed to think. He couldn't
go home. He checked into the motel, called his office and reported himself
sick. The room he got was bland and quiet. The only decorations were bad
steamboat prints. Nothing glowed from the walls.
Dolarhyde lay down in his
clothes. The ceiling had sparkling flecks in the plaster. Every few minutes he
had to get up and urinate. He shivered, then he sweated. An hour passed.
He did not want to give Reba
McClane to the Dragon. He thought about what the Dragon would do to him if he
didn't serve her up.
Intense fear comes in waves; the
body can't stand it for long at a time. In the heavy calm between the waves,
Dolarhyde could think. How could he keep from giving her to the Dragon? One way
kept nudging him. He got up. The light switch clacked loud in the tiled
bathroom. Dolarhyde looked at the shower-curtain rod, a solid piece of one-inch
pipe bolted to the bathroom walls. He took down the shower curtain and hung it over
the mirror.
Grasping the pipe, he chinned
himself with one arm, his toes dragging up the side of the bathtub. It was
stout enough. His belt was stout enough too. He could make himself do it. He
wasn't afraid of that.
He tied the end of his belt
around the pipe in a bowline knot. The buckle end formed a noose. The thick
belt didn't swing, it hung down in a stiff noose.
He sat on the toilet lid and
looked at it. He wouldn't get any drop, but he could stand it. He could keep
his hands off the noose until he was too weak to raise his arms.
But how could he be positive that
his death would affect the Dragon, now that he and the Dragon were Two? Maybe
it wouldn't. How could he be sure the Dragon then would leave her alone?
It might be days before they
found his body. She would wonder where he was. In that time would she go to his
house and feel around for him? Go upstairs and feel around for him and get a
surprise?
The Great Red Dragon would take
an hour spitting her down the stairs.
Should he call her and warn her?
What could she do against Him, even warned? Nothing. She could hope to die
quickly, hope that in His rage He would quickly bite deep enough.
Upstairs in Dolarhyde's house,
the Dragon waited in pictures he had framed with his own hands. The Dragon waited
in art books and magazines beyond number, rebom every time a photographer . . .
did what?
Dolarhyde could hear in his mind
the Dragon's powerful voice cursing Reba. He would curse her first, before he
bit. He would curse Dolarhyde too - tell her he was nothing.
"Don't do that. Don't . . .
do that," Dolarhyde said to the echoing tile. He listened to his voice,
the voice of Francis Dolarhyde, the voice that Reba McClane understood easily,
his own voice. He had been ashamed of it all his life, had said bitter and
vicious things to others with it.
But he had never heard the voice
of Francis Dolarhyde curse him.
"Don't do that."
The voice he heard now had never,
ever cursed him. It had repeated the Dragon's abuse. The memory shamed him.
He probably was not much of a
man, he thought. It occurred to him that he had never really found out about
that, and now he was curious.
He had one rag of pride that Reba
McClane had given him. It told him dying in a bathroom was a sorry end.
What else? What other way was
there?
There was a way and when it came
to him it was blasphemy, he knew. But it was a way.
He paced the motel room, paced
between the beds and from the door to the windows. As he walked he practiced
speaking. The words came out all right if he breathed deep between the
sentences and didn't hurry.
He could talk very well between
the rushes of fear. Now he had a bad one, he had one that made him retch. A
calm was coming after. He waited for it and when it came he hurried to the
telephone and placed a call to Brooklyn.
# # #
A junior high school band was
getting on the bus in the motel parking lot. The children saw Dolarhyde coming.
He had to go through them to get to his van.
A fat, round-faced boy with his
Sam Browne belt all crooked put on a scowl, puffed up his chest and flexed his
biceps after Dolarhyde passed. Two girls giggled. The tuba blatted out the bus
window as Dolarhyde went by, and he never heard the laughter behind him.
In twenty minutes he stopped the
van in the lane three hundred yards from Grandmother's house.
He mopped his face, inhaled
deeply three or four times. He gripped his house key in his left hand, the
steering wheel with his right.
A high keening sounded through
his nose. And again, louder. Louder, louder again. Go.
Gravel showered behind the van as
it shot forward, the house bouncing bigger in the windshield. The van slid
sideways into the yard and Dolarhyde was out of it, running.
Inside, not looking left or
right, pounding down the basement stairs, fumbling at the padlocked trunk in the
basement, looking at his keys.
The trunk keys were upstairs. He
didn't give himself time to think. A high humming through his nose as loud as
he could to numb thought, drown out voices as he climbed the stairs at a run.
At the bureau now, fumbling in
the drawer for the keys, not looking at the picture of the Dragon at the foot
of the bed.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Where were the keys, where were
the keys?
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP. I'VE NEVER SEEN A CHILD AS DISGUSTING
AND DIRTY AS YOU. STOP."
His searching hands slowed.
"LOOK . . . LOOK AT ME."
He gripped the edge of the bureau
- tried not to turn to the wall. He cut his eyes painfully away as his head
turned in spite of him.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"nothing."
The telephone was ringing,
telephone ringing, telephone ringing. He picked it up, his back to the picture.
"Hey, D., how are you
feeling?" Reba MeClane's voice.
He cleared his throat.
"Okay" - hardly a whisper.
"I tried to call you down
here. Your office said you were sick - you sound terrible."
"Talk to me."
"Of course I'll talk to you.
What do you think I called you for? What's wrong?"
"Flu," he said.
"Are you going to the
doctor? . . . Hello? I said, are you going to the doctor?"
"Talk loud." He
scrabbled in the drawer, tried the drawer next to it.
"Have we got a bad
connection? D., you shouldn't be there sick by yourself."
"TELL HER TO COME OVER TONIGHT AND TAKE CARE OF YOU."
Dolarhyde almost got his hand
over the mouthpiece in time.
"My God, what was that? Is
somebody with you?"
"The radio, I grabbed the
wrong knob."
"Hey, D., do you want me to
send somebody? You don't sound so hot. I'll come myself. I'll get Marcia to
bring me at lunch."
"No." The keys were
under a belt coiled in the drawer. He had them now. He backed into the hall,
carrying the telephone. "I'm okay. I'll see you soon." The /s/s
nearly foundered him. He ran down the stairs. The phone cord jerked out of the
wall and the telephone tumbled down the stafrs behind him.
A scream of savage rage. "COME HERE CUNT FACE."
Down to the basement. In the
trunk beside his case of dynamite was a small valise packed with cash, credit
cards and driver's licenses in various names, his pistol, knife, and blackjack.
He grabbed the valise and ran up
to the ground floor, quickly past the stairs, ready to fight if the Dragon came
down them. Into the van and driving hard, fishtailing in the gravel lane.
He slowed on the highway and
pulled over to the shoulder to heave yellow bile. Some of the fear went away.
Proceeding at legal speed, using
his flashers well ahead of turns, carefully he drove to the airport.
Dolarhyde paid his taxi fare in
front of an apartment house on Eastern Parkway two blocks from the Brooklyn
Museum. He walked the rest of the way. Joggers passed him, heading for Prospect
Park. Standing on the traffic island near the IRT subway station, he got a good
view of the Greek Revival building. He had never seen the Brooklyn Museum
before, though he had read its guidebook - he had ordered the book when he
first saw "Brooklyn Museum" in tiny letters beneath photographs of The
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.
The names of the great thinkers
from Confucius to Demosthenes were carved in stone above the entrance. It was
an imposing building with botanical gardens beside it, a fitting house for the
Dragon.
The subway rumbled beneath the
street, tingling the soles of his feet. Stale air puffed from the gratings and
mixed with the smell of the dye in his mustache.
Only an hour left before closing
time. He crossed the street and went inside. The checkroom attendant took his
valise.
"Will the checkroom be open
tomorrow?" he asked.
"The museum's closed
tomorrow." The attendant was a wizened woman in a blue smock. She turned
away from him.
"The people who come in
tomorrow, do they use the checkroom?"
"No. The museum's closed,
the checkroom's closed."
Good. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
Dolarhyde cruised among the great
glass cases in the Oceanic Hall and the Hall of the Americas on the ground floor
- Andes pottery, primitive edged weapons, artifacts and powerful masks ftom the
Indians of the Northwest coast.
Now there were only forty minutes
left before the museum closed. There was no more time to learn the ground
floor. He knew where the exits and the public elevators were.
He rode up to the fifth floor. He
could feel that he was closer to the Dragon now, but it was all right - he
wouldn't turn a corner and run into Him.
The Dragon was not on public
display; the painting had been locked away in the dark since its return from
the Tate Gallery in London.
Dolarhyde had learned on the
telephone that The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
was rarely displayed. It was almost two hundred years old and a watercolor -
light would fade it.
Dolarhyde stopped in front of
Albert Bierstadt's A Storm in the Rocky Mountains - Mt. Rosalie 1866.
From there he could see the locked doors of the Painting Study and Storage
Department. That's where the Dragon was. Not a copy, not a photograph: the
Dragon. This is where he would come tomorrow when he had his appointment.
He walked around the perimeter of
the fifth floor, past the corridor of portraits, seeing nothing of the
paintings. The exits were what interested him. He found the fire exits and the
main stairs, and marked the location of the public elevators.
The guards were polite
middle-aged men in thick-soled shoes, years of standing in the set of their
legs. None was armed, Dolarhyde noted; one of the guards in the lobby was
armed. Maybe he was a moonlighting cop.
The announcement of closing time
came over the public-address system.
Dolarhyde stood on the pavement
under the allegorical figure of Brooklyn and watched the crowd come out into
the pleasant summer evening.
Joggers ran in place, waiting while
the stream of people crossed the sidewalk toward the subway.
Dolarhyde spent a few minutes in
the botanical gardens. Then he flagged a taxi and gave the driver the address
of a store he had found in the Yellow Pages.
At nine P.M. Monday Graham set
his briefcase on the floor outside the Chicago apartment he was using and
rooted in his pocket for the keys.
He had spent a long day in
Detroit interviewing staff and checking employment records at a hospital where
Mrs. Jacobi did volunteer work before the family moved to Birmingham. He was
looking for a drifter, someone who might have worked in both Detroit and
Atlanta or in Birmingham and Atlanta; someone with access to a van and a
wheelchair who saw Mrs. Jacobi and Mrs. Leeds before he broke into their
houses.
Crawford thought the trip was a
waste of time, but humored him. Crawford had been right. Damn Crawford. He was
right too much.
Graham could hear the telephone
ringing in the apartment. The keys caught in the lining of his pocket. When he
jerked them out, a long thread came with them. Change spilled down the inside
of the trouser leg and scattered on the floor.
"Son of a bitch."
He made it halfway across the
room before the phone stopped ringing. Maybe that was Molly trying to reach
him.
He called her in Oregon.
Willy's grandfather answered the
telephone with his mouth full. It was suppertime in Oregon.
"Just ask Molly to call me
when she's finished," Graham told him. He was in the shower with shampoo
in his eyes when the telephone rang again. He sluiced his head and went
dripping to grab the receiver. "Hello, Hotlips."
"You silver-tongued devil,
this is Byron Metcalf in Birmingham."
"Sorry."
"I've got good news and bad
news. You were right about Niles Jacobi. He took the stuff out of the house.
He'd gotten rid of it, but I squeezed him with some hash that was in his room
and he owned up. That's the bad news - I know you hoped the Tooth Fairy stole
it and fenced it.
"The good news is there's
some film. I don't have it yet. Niles says there are two reels stuffed under
the seat in his car. You still want it, right?"
"Sure, sure I do."
"Well, his intimate friend
Randy's using the car and we haven't caught up with him yet, but it won't be
long. Want me to put the film on the first plane to Chicago and call you when
it's coming?"
"Please do. That's good,
Byron, thanks."
"Nothing to it."
Molly called just as Graham was
drifting off to sleep. After they assured each other that they were all right,
there didn't seem to be much to say.
Willy was having a real good
time, Molly said. She let Willy say good night.
Willy had plenty more to say than
just good night - he told Will the exciting news: Grandpa bought him a pony.
Molly hadn't mentioned it.
The Brooklyn Museum is closed to
the general public on Tuesdays, but art classes and researchers are admitted.
The museum is an excellent
facility for serious scholarship. The staff members are knowledgeable and
accommodating; often they allow researchers to come by appointment on Tuesdays
to see items not on public display.
Francis Dolarhyde came out of the
IRT subway station shortly after 2 P.M. on Tuesday carrying his scholarly
materials. He had a notebook, a Tate Gallery catalog, and a biography of
William Blake under his arm.
He had a flat 9-mm pistol, a
leather sap and his razor-edged fileting knife under his shirt. An elastic
bandage held the weapons against his flat belly. His sport coat would button
over them. A cloth soaked in chloroform and sealed in a plastic bag was in his
coat pocket.
In his hand he carried a new
guitar case.
Three pay telephones stand near
the subway exit in the center of Eastern Parkway. One of the telephones has
been ripped out. One of the others works.
Dolarhyde fed it quarters until
Reba said, "Hello."
He could hear darkroom noises
over her voice.
"Hello, Reba," he said.
"Hey, D. How're you
feeling?"
Traffic passing on both sides
made it hard for him to hear. "Okay."
"Sounds like you're at a pay
phone. I thought you were home sick."
"I want to talk to you
later."
"Okay. Call me late, all
right?"
"I need to . . . see
you."
"I want you to see me, but I
can't tonight. I have to work. Will you call me?"
"Yeah. If nothing . .
."
"Excuse me?"
"I'll call."
"I do want you to come soon,
D."
"Yeah. Good-bye . . .
Reba."
All right. Fear trickled from his
breastbone to his belly. He squeezed it and crossed the street.
Entrance to the Brooklyn Museum
on Tuesdays is through a single door on the extreme right. Dolarhyde went in
behind four art students. The students piled their knapsacks and satchels
against the wall and got out their passes. The guard behind the desk checked
them.
He came to Dolarhyde.
"Do you have an
appointment?"
Dolarhyde nodded. "Painting
Study, Miss Harper."
"Sign the register,
please." The guard offered a pen. Dolarhyde had his own pen ready. He
sigued "Paul Crane." The guard dialed an upstairs extension.
Dolarhyde turned his back to the desk and studied Robert Blum's Vintage
Festival over the entrance while the guard confirmed his appointment. From
the comer of his eye he could see one more security guard in the lobby. Yes,
that was the one with the gun.
"Back of the lobby by the
shop there's a bench next to the main elevators," the desk officer said.
"Wait there. Miss Harper's coming down for you." He handed Dolarhyde
a pink-on-white plastic badge.
"Okay if I leave my guitar
here?"
"I'll keep an eye on
it."
The museum was different with the
lights turned down. There was twilight among the great glass cases.
Dolarhyde waited on the bench for
three minutes before Miss Harper got off the public elevator.
"Mr. Crane? I'm Paula
Harper."
She was younger than she had
sounded on the telephone when he called from St. Louis; a sensible-looking
woman, severely pretty. She wore her blouse and skirt like a uniform.
"You called about the Blake
watercolor," she said. "Let's go upstairs and I'll show it to you.
We'll take the staff elevator - this way."
She led him past the dark museum
shop and through a small room lined with primitive weapons. He looked around
fast to keep his bearings. In the corner of the Americas section was a corridor
which led to the small elevator.
Miss Harper pushed the button.
She hugged her elbows and waited. The clear blue eyes fell on the pass, pink on
white, clipped to Dolarhyde's lapel.
"That's a sixth-floor pass
he gave you," she said. "It doesn't matter - there aren't any guards
on five today. What kind of research are you doing?"
Dolarhyde had made it on smiles
and nods until now. "A paper on Butts," he said.
"On William Butts?"
He nodded.
"I've never read much on
him. You only see him in footnotes as a patron of Blake's. Is he
interesting?"
"I'm just beginning. I'll
have to go to England."
"I think the National
Gallery has two watercolors he did for Butts. Have you seen them yet?"
"Not yet."
"Better write ahead of
time."
He nodded. The elevator came.
Fifth floor. He was tingling a
little, but he had blood in his arms and legs. Soon it would be just yes or no.
If it went wrong, he wouldn't let them take him.
She led him down the corridor of
American portraits. This wasn't the way he came before. He could tell where he
was. It was all right.
But something waited in the
corridor for him, and when he saw it he stopped dead still.
Paula Harper realized he wasn't
following and turned around. He was rigid before a niche in the wall of
portraits. She came back to him and saw what he was staring at. "That's a
Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington," she said.
No it wasn't.
"You see a similar one on
the dollar bill. They call it a Lansdowne portrait because Stuart did one for
the Marquis of Lansdowne to thank him for his support in the American
Revolution . . . Are you all right, Mr. Crane?"
Dolarhyde was pale. This was
worse than all the dollar bills he had ever seen. Washington with his hooded
eyes and bad false teeth stared out of the frame. My God he looked like
Grandmother. Dolarhyde felt like a child with a rubber knife.
"Mr. Crane, are you
okay?"
Answer or blow it all. Get past
this. My God, man, that's so sweeeet. YOU'RE THE DIRTIEST. . . No.
Say something.
"I'm taking cobalt," he
said. "Would you like to sit down for a few minutes?" There was a
faint medicinal smell about him.
"No. Go ahead. I'm
coming."
And you are not going to cut me,
Grandmother. God damn you, I'd kill you if you weren't already dead. Already
dead. Already dead. Grandmother was already dead! Dead now, dead for always. My
God, man, that's so sweeeet.
The other wasn't dead though, and
Dolarhyde knew it
He followed Miss Harper through
thickets of fear.
They went through double doors
into the Painting Study and Storage Department. Dolarhyde looked around
qulckly. It was a long, peaceful room, well-lighted and filled with carousel
racks of draped paintings. A row of small office cubicles was partitioned off
along the wall. The door to the cubicle on the far end was ajar, and he heard
typing.
He saw no one but Paula Harper.
She took him to a counter-height
work table and brought him a stool.
"Wait here. I'll bring the
painting to you."
She disappeared behind the racks.
Dolarhyde undid a button at his
belly.
Miss Harper was coming. She
carried a flat black case no bigger than a briefcase. It was in there. How did
she have the strength to carry the picture? He had never thought of it as flat.
He had seen the dimensions in the catalogs - 17 1/8 by 13 1/2 inches - but he
had paid no attention to them. He expected it to be immense. But it was small.
It was small and it was here in a quiet room. He had never realized how much
strength the Dragon drew from the old house in the orchard.
Miss Harper was saying something
". . . have to keep it in this solander box because light will fade it.
That's why it's not on display very often."
She put the case on the table and
unclasped it. A noise at the double doors. "Excuse me, I have to get the
door for Julio." She refastened the case and carried it with her to the
glass doors. A man with a wheeled dolly waited outside. She held the doors open
while he rolled it in.
"Over here okay?"
"Yes, thank you,
Julio."
The man went out.
Here came Miss Harper with the
solander box.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Crane.
Julio's dusting today and getting the tarnish off some frames." She opened
the case and took out a white cardboard folder. "You understand that you
aren't allowed to touch it. I'll display it for you - that's the rule.
Okay?"
Dolarbyde nodded. He couldn't
speak.
She opened the folder and removed
the covering plastic sheet and mat.
There it was. The Great Red
Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun - the Man-Dragon rampant over the
prostrate pleading woman caught in a coil of his tail.
It was small all right, but it
was powerful. Stunning. The best reproductions didn't do justice to the details
and the colors.
Dolarhyde saw it clear, saw it
all in an instant - Blake's hand - writing on the borders, two brown spots at
the right edge of the paper. It seized him hard. It was too much . . . the
colors were so much stronger.
Look at the woman wrapped in the
Dragon's tail. Look.
He saw that her hair was the
exact color of Reba McClane's. He saw that he was twenty feet from the door. He
held in voices.
I hope I didn't shock
you, said Reba McClane.
"It appears that he used
chalk as well as watercolor," Paula Harper was saying. She stood at an
angle so that she could see what he was doing. Her eyes never left the
painting.
Dolarhyde put his hand inside his
shirt.
Somewhere a telephone was
ringing. The typing stopped. A woman stuck her head out of the far cubicle.
"Paula, telephone for you.
It's your mother."
Miss Harper did not turn her
head. Her eyes never left Dolarhyde or the painting. "Would you take a
message?" she said. "Tell her I'll call her back."
The woman disappeared into the
office. In a moment the typing started again.
Dolarhyde couldn't hold it anymore.
Play for it all, right now.
But the Dragon moved first.
"I'VE NEVER SEEN-"
"What?" Miss Harper's
eyes were wide.
"- a rat that big!"
Dolarhyde said, pointing. "Climbing that frame!"
Miss Harper was turning.
"Where?"
The blackjack slid out of his shirt.
With his wrist more than his arm, he tapped the back of her skull. She sagged
as Dolarhyde grabbed a handful of her blouse and clapped the chloroform rag
over her face. She made a high sound once, not overloud, and went limp.
He eased her to the floor between
the table and the racks of paintings, pulled the folder with the watercolor to
the floor, and squatted over her. Rustling, wadding, hoarse breathing and a
telephone ringing.
The woman came out of the far
office.
"Paula?" She looked
around the room. "It's your mother," she called. "She needs to
talk to you now."
She walked behind the table.
"I'll take care of the visitor if you . . ." She saw them then. Paula
Harper on the floor, her hair across her face, and squatting over her, his
pistol in his hand, Dolarhyde stuffing the last bite of the watercolor in his
mouth. Rising, chewing, running. Toward her.
She ran for her office, slammed
the flimsy door, grabbed at the phone and knocked it to the floor, scrambled
for it on her hands and knees and tried to dial on the busy line as her door
caved in. The lighted dial burst in bright colors at the impact behind her ear.
The receiver fell quacking to the floor.
Dolarhyde in the staff elevator
watched the indicator lights blink down, his gun held flat across his stomach,
covered by his books.
First floor.
Out into the deserted galleries.
He walked fast, his running shoes whispering on the terrazzo. A wrong turn and
he was passing the whale masks, the great mask of Sisuit, losing seconds,
running now into the presence of the Haida high totems and lost. He ran to the
totems, looked left, saw the primitive edged weapons and knew where he was.
He peered around the corner at
the lobby.
The desk officer stood at the
bulletin board, thirty feet from the reception desk.
The armed guard was closer to the
door. His holster creaked as he bent to rub a spot on the toe of his shoe.
If they fight, drop him first.
Dolarhyde put the gun under his belt and buttoned his coat over it. He walked
across the lobby, unclipping his pass.
The desk officer turned when he
heard the footsteps.
"Thank you," Dolarhyde
said. He held up his pass by the edges, then dropped it on the desk.
The guard nodded. "Would you
put it through the slot there, please?"
The reception desk telephone
rang.
The pass was hard to pick up off
the glass top. The telephone rang again. Hurry.
Dolarhyde got hold of the pass,
dropped it through the slot. He picked up his guitar case from the pile of
knapsacks.
The guard was coming to the
telephone.
Out the door now, walking fast
for the botanical gardens, he was ready to turn and fire if he heard pursuit.
Inside the gardens and to the
left, Dolarhyde ducked into a space between a small shed and a hedge. He opened
the guitar case and dumped out a tennis racket, a tennis ball, a towel, a
folded grocery sack and a big bunch of leafy celery.
Buttons flew as he tore off his
coat and shirt in one move and stepped out of his trousers. Underneath he wore
a Brooklyn College T-shirt and warm-up pants. He stuffed his books and clothing
into the grocery bag, then the weapons. The celery stuck out the top. He wiped
the handle and clasps of the case and shoved it under the hedge.
Cutting across the gardens now
toward Prospect Park, the towel around his neck, he came out onto Empire Boulevard.
Joggers were ahead of him. As he followed the joggers into the park, the first
police cruisers screamed past. None of the joggers paid any attention to them.
Neither did Dolarhyde.
He alternated jogging and
walking, carrying his grocery bag and racket and bouncing his tennis ball, a
man cooing off from a hard workout who had stopped by the store on the way
home.
He made himself slow down; he
shouldn't run on a full stomach. He could choose his pace now.
He could choose anything.
Crawford sat in the back row of
the jury box eating Redskin peanuts while Graham closed the courtroom blinds.
"You'll have the profile for
me later this afternoon, I take it," Crawford said. "You told me
Tuesday; this is Tuesday."
"I'll finish it. I want to
watch this first."
Graham opened the express
envelope from Byron Metcalf and dumped out the contents - two dusty rolls of
home-movie film, each in plastic sandwich bag.
"Is Metcalf pressing charges
against Niles Jacobi?"
"Not for theft - he'll
probably inherit anyway - he and Jacobi's brother," Graham said. "On
the hash, I don't know. Birmingham DA's inclined to break his chops."
"Good," Crawford said.
The movie screen swung down from
the courtroom ceiling to face the jury box, an arrangement which made it easy
to show jurors filmed evidence.
Graham threaded the projector.
"On checking the newsstands
where the Tooth Fairy could have gotten a Tattler so fast - I've had
reports back from Cincinnati, Detroit, and a bunch from Chicago," Crawford
said. "Various weirdos to run down."
Graham started the film. It was a
fishing movie.
The Jacobi children hunkered on
the bank of a pond with cane poles and bobbers.
Graham tried not to think of them
in their small boxes in the ground. He tried to think of them just fishing.
The girl's cork bobbed and
disappeared. She had a bite.
Crawford crackled his peanut
sack. "Indianapolis is dragging ass on questioning newsies and checking
the Servco Supreme stations," he said.
"Do you want to watch this
or what?" Graham said.
Crawford was silent until the end
of the two-minute film. "Terrific, she caught a perch," he said.
"Now the profile-"
"Jack, you were in
Birmingham right after it happened. I didn't get there for a month. You saw the
house while it was still their house - I didn't. It was stripped and remodeled
when I got there. Now, for Christ's sake let me look at these people and then
I'll finish the profile."
He started the second film.
A birthday party appeared on the
screen in the courtroom. The Jacobis were seated around a dining table. They
were singing.
Graham lip-read "Haaappy
Birth-day to you."
Eleven-year-old Donald Jacobi
faced the camera. He was seated at the end of the table with the cake in front
of him. The candles reflected in his glasses.
Around the corner of the table,
his brother and sister were side by side watching him as he blew out the
candles.
Graham shifted in his seat.
Mrs. Jacobi leaned over, her dark
hair swinging, to catch the cat and dump it off the table.
Now Mrs. Jacobi brought a large
envelope to her son. A long ribbon trailed from it. Donald Jacobi opened the
envelope and took out a big birthday card. He looked up at the camera and
turned the card around. It said "Happy Birthday - follow the ribbon."
Bouncing progress as the camera
followed the procession to the kitchen. A door there, fastened with a hook.
Down the basement stairs, Donald first, then the others, following the ribbon
down the steps. The end of the ribbon was tied around the handlebars of a
ten-speed bicycle.
Graham wondered why they hadn't
given him the bike outdoors.
A jumpy cut to the next scene,
and his question was answered. Outdoors now, and clearly it had been raining
hard. Water stood in the yard. The house looked different. Realtor Geehan had changed
the color when he did it over after the murders. The outside basement door
opened and Mr. Jacobi emerged carrying the bicycle. This was the first view of
him in the movie. A breeze lifted the hair combed across his bald spot. He set
the bicycle ceremoniously on the ground.
The film ended with Donald's
cautious first ride.
"Sad damn thing,"
Crawford said, "but we already knew that." Graham started the
birthday film over.
Crawford shook his head and began
to read something from his briefcase with the aid of a penlight.
On the screen Mr. Jacobi brought
the bicycle out of the basement. The basement door swung closed behind him. A
padlock hung from it.
Graham froze the frame.
"There. That's what he wanted the bolt cutter for, Jack - to cut that
padlock and go in through the basement. Why didn't he go in that way?''
Crawford clicked off his penlight
and looked over his glasses at the screen. "What's that?"
"I know he had a bolt cutter
- he used it to trim that branch out of his way when he was watching from the
woods. Why didn't he use it and go in through the basement door?"
"He couldn't." With a
small crocodile smile, Crawford waited. He loved to catch people in
assumptions.
"Did he try? Did he mark it
up? I never even saw that door - Geehan had put in a steel one with deadbolts
by the time I got there."
Crawford opened his jaws.
"You assume Geehan put it in. Geehan didn't put it in. The steel
door was there when they were killed. Jacobi must have put it in - he was a
Detroit guy, he'd favor deadbolts."
"When did Jacobi put it
in?"
"I don't know. Obviously it
was after the kid's birthday - when was that? It'll be in the autopsy if you've
got it here."
"His birthday was April 14,
a Monday," Graham said, staring at the screen, his chin in his hand.
"I want to know when Jacobi changed the door."
Crawford's scalp wrinkled. It
smoothed out again as he saw the point. "You think the Tooth Fairy cased
the Jacobi house while the old door with the padlock was still there," he
said.
"He brought a bolt cutter,
didn't he? How do you break in someplace with a bolt cutter?" Graham said.
"You cut padlocks, bars, or chain. Jacobi didn't have any bars or chained
gates, did he?"
"No."
"Then he went there
expecting a padlock. A bolt cutter's fairly heavy and it's long. He was moving
in daylight, and from where he parked he had to hike a long way to the Jacobi
house. For all he knew, he might be coming back in one hell of a hurry if
something went wrong. He wouldn't have carried a bolt cutter unless he knew
he'd need it. He was expecting a padlock."
"You figure he cased the
place before Jacobi changed the door. Then he shows up to kill them, waits in
the woods-"
"You can't see this side of
the house from the woods."
Crawford nodded. "He waits
in the woods. They go to bed and he moves in with his bolt cutter and finds the
new door with the deadbolts."
"Say he finds the new door.
He had it all worked out, and now this," Graham said, throwing up his
hands. "He's really pissed off, frustrated, he's hot to get in there. So
he does a fast, loud pry job on the patio door. It was messy the way he went in
- he woke Jacobi up and had to blow him away on the stairs. That's not like the
Dragon. He's not messy that way. He's careful and he leaves nothing behind. He
did a neat job at the Leedses' going in."
"Okay, all right,"
Crawford said. "If we find out when Jacobi changed his door, maybe we'll
establish the interval between when he cased it and when he killed them. The
minimum time that elapsed, anyway. That seems like a useful thing to know. Maybe
it'll match some interval the Birmingham convention and visitors bureau could
show us. We can check car rentals again. This time we'll do vans too. I'll have
a word with the Birmingham field office."
Crawford's word must have been
emphatic: in forty minutes flat a Birmingham FBI agent, with realtor Geehan in
tow, was shouting to a carpenter working in the rafters of a new house. The
carpenter's information was relayed in a radio patch to Chicago.
"Last week in April,"
Crawford said, putting down the telephone. "That's when they put in the
new door. My God, that's two months before the Jacobis were hit. Why would he
case it two months in advance?"
"I don't know, but I promise
you he saw Mrs. Jacobi or saw the whole family before he checked out their
house. Unless he followed them down there from Detroit, he spotted Mrs. Jacobi
sometime between April 10, when they moved to Birmingham, and the end of April,
when the door was changed. Sometime in that period he was in Birmingham. The
bureau's going on with it down there?"
"Cops too," Crawford
said. "Tell me this: how did he know there was an inside door from the
basement into the house? You couldn't count on that - not in the South."
"He saw the inside of the
house, no question."'
"Has your buddy Metcalf got
the Jacobi bank statements?"
"I'm sure he does."
"Let's see what service
calls they paid for between April 10 and the end of the month. I know the
service calls have been checked for a couple of weeks back from the killings,
but maybe we aren't looking back far enough. Same for the Leedses."
"We always figured he looked
around inside the Leeds house," Graham said. "From the alley he
couldn't have seen the glass in the kitchen door. There's a latticed porch back
there. But he was ready with his glass cutter. And they didn't have any service
calls for three months before they were killed."
"If he's casing this far
ahead, maybe we didn't check back far enough. We will now. At the Leedses'
though - when he was in the alley reading meters behind the Leeds house two
days before he killed them - maybe he saw them going in the house. He could
have looked in there while the porch door was open."
"No, the doors don't line up
- remember? Look here."
Graham threaded the projector
with the Leeds home movie.
The Leedses' gray Scotty perked
up his ears and ran to the kitchen door. Valerie Leeds and the children came in
carrying groceries. Through the kitchen door nothing but lattice was visible.
"All right, you want to get
Byron Metcalf busy on the bank statement for April? Any kind of service call or
purchase that a door-to-door salesman might handle. No - I'll do that while you
wind up the profile. Have you got Metcalf's number?"
Seeing the Leedses preoccupied
Graham. Absently he told Crawford three numbers for Byron Metcalf.
He ran the films again while
Crawford used the phone in the jury room.
The Leeds film first.
There was the Leedses' dog. It
wore no collar, and the neighborhood was full of dogs, but the Dragon knew
which dog was theirs.
Here was Valerie Leeds. The sight
of her tugged at Graham.
There was the door behind her,
vulnerable with its big glass pane. Her children played on the courtroom
screen.
Graham had never felt as close to
the Jacobis as he did to the Leedses. Their movie disturbed him now. It
bothered him that he had thought of the Jacobis as chalk marks on a bloody
floor.
There were the Jacobi children,
ranged around the corner of the table, the birthday candles flickering on their
faces.
For a flash Graham saw the blob
of candle wax on the Jacobis' bedside table, the bloodstains around the corner
of the bedroom at the Leedses'. Something . . .
Crawford was coming back.
"Metcalf said to ask you-"
"Don't talk to
me!"
Crawford wasn't offended, He
waited stock-still and his little eyes grew narrow and bright.
The film ran on, its light and
shadows playing over Graham's face.
There was the Jacobis' cat. The
Dragon knew it was the Jacobis' cat.
There was the inside basement
door.
There was the outside basement
door with its padlock. The Dragon had brought a bolt cutter.
The film ended. Finally it came
off the reel and the end flapped around and around.
Everything the Dragon needed to
know was on the two films. They hadn't been shown in public, there wasn't any
film club, film festi . . .
Graham looked at the familiar
green box the Leeds movie came in. Their name and address were on it. And
Gateway Film Laboratory, St. Louis, Mo. 63102.
His mind retrieved "St.
Louis" just as it would retrieve any telephone number he had ever seen.
What about St. Louis? It was one of the places where the Tattler was
available on Monday night, the same day it was printed - the day before Lounds
was abducted.
"Oh me," Graham said.
"Oh Jesus."
He clamped his hands on the sides
of his head to keep the thought from getting away.
"Do you still have Metcalf
on the phone?"
Crawford handed him the receiver.
"Byron, it's Graham. Listen,
did those reels of Jacobi film you sent - were they in any containers? . . .
Sure, sure I know you would have sent 'em along. I need help bad on something.
Do you have the Jacobi bank statements there? Okay, I want to know where they
got movie film developed. Probably a store sent it off for them. If there're
any checks to pharmacies or camera stores, we can find out where they did
business. It's urgent, Byron. I'll tell you about it first chance. Birmingham
FBI will start now checking the stores. If you find something, shoot it
straight to them, then to us. Will you do that? Great. What? No, I will not
introduce you to Hotlips."
Birmingham FBI agents checked
four camera stores before they found the one where the Jacobis traded. The
manager said all customers' film was sent to one place for processing.
Crawford had watched the films
twelve times before Birmingham called back. He took the message.
Curiously formal, he held out his
hand to Graham. "It's Gateway," he said.
Crawford was stirring an
Alka-Seltzer in a plastic glass when the stewardess's voice came over the 727'S
public-address system.
"Passenger Crawford,
please?"
When he waved from his aisle
seat, she came aft to him. "Mr. Crawford, would you go to the cockpit,
please?"
Crawford was gone for four
minutes. He slid back into the seat beside Graham.
"Tooth Fairy was in New York
today."
Graham winced and his teeth
clicked together.
"No. He just tapped a couple
of women on the head at the Brooklyn Museum and, listen to this, he ate a
painting."
"Ate it?"
"Ate it. The Art Squad in
New York snapped to it when they found out what he ate. They got two partial
prints off the plastic pass he used and they flashed them down to Price a
little while ago. When Price put 'em together on the screen, he rang the
cherries. No ID, but it's the same thumb that was on the Leeds kid's eye."
"New York," Graham
said.
"Means nothing, he was in
New York today. He could still work at Gateway. If he does, he was off the job
today. Makes it easier."
"What did he eat?"
"It was a thing called The
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. William Blake drew it,
they said."
"What about the women?"
"He's got a sweet touch with
the sap. Younger one's just at the hospital for observation. The older one had
to have four stitches. Mild concussion."
"Could they give a
description?"
"The younger one did. Quiet,
husky, dark mustache and hair - a wig, I think. The guard at the door said the
same thing. The older woman - he could've been in a rabbit suit for all she
saw.
"But he didn't kill
anybody."
"Odd," Crawford said.
"He'd have been better off to wax 'em both - he could have been sure of
his lead time leaving and saved himself a description or two. Behavioral
Science called Bloom in the hospital about it. You know what he said? Bloom
said maybe he's trying to stop."
Dolarhyde heard the flaps moan
down. The Tights of St. Louis wheeled slowly beneath the black wing. Under his
feet the landing gear rumbled into a rush of air and locked down with a thud.
He rolled his head on his
shoulders to ease the stiffness in his powerful neck.
Coming home.
He had taken a great risk, and
the prize he brought back was the power to choose. He could choose to have Reba
McCIane alive. He could have her to talk to, and he could have her startling
and harmless mobility in his bed.
He did not have to dread his house.
He had the Dragon in his belly now. He could go into his house, walk up to a
copy Dragon on the wall and wad him up if be wanted to.
He did not have to worry about
feeling Love for Reba. If he felt Love for her, he could toss the Shermans to
the Dragon and ease it that way, go back to Reba calm and easy, and treat her
well.
From the terminal Dolarhyde
telephoned her apartment. Not home yet. He tried Baeder Chemical. The night
line was busy. He thought of Reba walking toward the bus stop after work, tapping
along with her cane, her raincoat over her shoulders.
He drove to the film laboratory
through the light evening traffic in less than fifteen minutes.
She wasn't at the bus stop. He
parked on the street behind Baeder Chemical, near the entrance closest to the
darkrooms. He'd tell her he was here, wait until she had finished working, and
drive her home. He was proud of his new power to choose. He wanted to use it.
There were things he could catch
up on in his office while he waited.
Only a few lights were on in
Baeder Chemical.
Reba's darkroom was locked. The
light above the door was neither red nor green. It was off. He pressed the
buzzer. No response.
Maybe she had left a message in
his office.
He heard footsteps in the
corridor.
The Baeder supervisor, Dandridge,
passed the darkroom area and never looked up. He was walking fast and carrying
a thick bundle of buff personnel files under his arm.
A small crease appeared in
Dolarhyde's forehead.
Dandridge was halfway across the
parking lot, heading for the Gateway building, when Dolarhyde came out of
Baeder behind him.
Two delivery vans and half a
dozen cars were on the lot. That Buick belonged to Fisk, Gateway's personnel
director. What were they doing?
There was no night shift at
Gateway. Much of the building was dark. Dolarhyde could see by the red exit
signs in the corridor as he went toward his office. The lights were on behind
the frosted glass door of the personnel department. Dolarhyde heard voices in
there, Dandridge's for one, and Fisk's.
A woman's footsteps coming.
Fisk's secretary turned the corner into the corridor ahead of Dolarhyde. She
had a scarf tied over her curlers and she carried ledgers from Accounting. She
was in a hurry. The ledgers were heavy, a big armload. She pecked on Fisk's office
door with her toe.
Will Graham opened it for her.
Dolarhyde froze in the dark hall.
His gun was in his van.
The office door closed again.
Dolarhyde moved fast, his running
shoes quiet on the smooth floor. He put his face close to the glass of the exit
door and scanned the parking lot. Movement now under the floodlights. A man
moving. He was beside one of the delivery vans and he had a flashlight.
Flicking something. He was dusting the outside mirror for fingerprints.
Behind Dolarhyde, somewhere in
the corridors, a man was walking. Get away from the door. He ducked around the
comer and down the stairs to the basement and the furnace room on the opposite
side of the building.
By standing on a workbench he
could reach the high windows that opened at ground level behind the shrubbery.
He rolled over the sill and came up on his hands and knees in the bushes, ready
to run or fight.
Nothing moved on this side of the
building. He stood up, put a hand in his pocket and strolled across the street.
Running when the sidewalk was dark, walking as cars went by, he made a long
loop around Gateway and Baeder Chemical.
His van stood at the curb behind
Baeder. There was no place to hide close to it. All right. He sprinted across
the street and leaped in, clawing at his valise.
Full clip in the automatic. He
jacked a round into the chamber and laid the pistol on the console, covering it
with a T-shirt.
Slowly he drove away - don't
catch the light red-slowly around the corner and into the scattered traffic.
He had to think now and it was
hard to think.
It had to be the films. Graham
knew about the films somehow. Graham knew where. He didn't know who. If he knew
who, he wouldn't need personnel records. Why accounting records too? Absences,
that's why. Match absences against the dates when the Dragon struck. No, those
were Saturdays, except for Lounds. Absences on the days before those Saturdays;
he'd look for those. Fool him there - no workmen's compensation slips were kept
for management.
Dolarhyde drove slowly up
Lindbergh Boulevard, gesturing with his free hand as he ticked off the points.
They were looking for
fingerprints. He'd given them no chance for fingerprints - except maybe on the
plastic pass at Brooklyn Museum. He'd picked it up in a hurry, mostly by the
edges.
They must have a print. Why
fingerprint if they didn't have something to match it to?
They were checking that van for
prints. No time to see if they were checking cars too.
Van. Carrying the wheelchair with
Lounds in it - that tipped them. Or maybe somebody in Chicago saw the van.
There were a lot of vans at Gateway, private vans, delivery vans.
No, Graham just knew he had a
van. Graham knew because he knew. Graham knew. Graham knew. The son of a bitch
was a monster.
They'd fingerprint everyone at
Gateway and Baeder too. If they didn't spot him tonight, they'd do it tomorrow.
He had to run forever with his face on every bulletin board in every post
office and police statio. It was all coming to pieces. He was puny and small
before them.
"Reba," he said aloud,
Reba couldn't save him now. They were closing in on him, and he was nothing but
a puny hareli-
"ARE YOU SORRY NOW THAT YOU BETRAYED ME?"
The Dragon's voice rumbled from
deep within him, deep as the shredded painting in his bowels.
"I didn't. I just wanted to
choose. You called me-"
"GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND I'LL SAVE YOU."
"No. I'll run."
"GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND YOU'LL HEAR GRAHAM'S SPINE SNAP."
"No."
"I ADMIRE WHAT YOU DID TODAY. WE'RE CLOSE NOW. WE CAN BE ONE AGAIN.
DO YOU EEEL ME INSIDE YOU? YOU DO, DON'T YOU?"
"Yes."
"AND YOU KNOW I CAN SAVE YOU. YOU KNOW THEY'LL SEND YOU TO A PLACE
WORSE THAN BROTHER BUDDY'S. GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND YOU'LL BE FREE."
"No."
"THEY'LL KILL YOU. YOU'LL JERK ON THE GROUND."
"No."
"WHEN YOU'RE GONE SHE'LL FUCK OTHER PEOPLE, SHE'LL-"
"No! Shut up."
"SHE'LL FUCK OTHER PEOPLE, PRETTY PEOPLE, SHE'LL PUT THEIR-"
"Stop it. Shut up."
"SLOW DOWN AND I WON'T SAY IT."
Dolarhyde's foot lifted on the
accelerator.
"THAT'S GOOD. GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND IT CAN'T HAPPEN. GIVE IT TO
ME AND THEN I'LL ALWAYS LET YOU CHOOSE, YOU CAN ALWAYS CHOOSE, AND YOU'LL SPEAK
WELL, I WANT YOU TO SPEAK WELL, SLOW DOWN, THAT'S RIGHT, SEE THE SERVICE
STATION? PULL OVER THERE AND LET ME TALK TO YOU . . ."
Graham came out of the office
suite and rested his eyes for a moment in the dim hallway. He was restive,
uneasy. This was taking too long.
Crawford was sifting the 380
Gateway and Baeder employees as fast and well as it could be done - the man was
a marvel at this kind of job - but time was passing and secrecy could be
maintained only so long.
Crawford had kept the working
group at Gateway to a minimum. ("We want to find him, not spook him,"
Crawford had told them. "If we can spot him tonight, we can take him
outside the plant, maybe at his house or on the lot.")
The St. Louis police department
was cooperating. Lieutenant Fogel of St. Louis homicide and one sergeant came
quietly in an unmarked car, bringing a Datafax.
Wired to a Gateway telephone, in
minutes the Datafax was transmitting the employment roll simultaneously to the
FBI identification section in Washington and the Missouri Department of Motor
Vehicles.
In Washington, the names would be
checked against both the civil and criminal fingerprint records. Names of Baeder
employees with security clearances were flagged for faster handling.
The Department of Motor Vehicles
would check for ownership of vans.
Only four employees were brought
in - the personnel manager,
Fisk; Fisk's secretary; Dandridge
from Baeder Chemical; and Gateway's chief accountant.
No telephones were used to summon
the employees to this late night meeting at the plant. Agents called at their
houses and stated their business privately. ("Look 'em over before you
tell 'em why you want 'em," Crawford said. "And don't let them use
the tele- phone after. This kind of news travels fast.")
They had hoped for a quick
identification from the teeth. None of the four employees recognized them.
Graham looked down the long
corridors lit with red exit signs. Damn it felt right.
What else could they do tonight?
Crawford had requested that the
woman from the Brooklyn Museum - Miss Harper - be flown out as soon as she
could travel. Probably that would be in the morning. The St. Louis police
department had a good surveillance van. She could sit in it and watch the
employees go in.
If they didn't hit it tonight,
all traces of the operation would be removed from Gateway before work started
in the morning. Graham didn't kid himself - they'd be lucky to have a whole day
to work before the word got out at Gateway. The Dragon would be watching for
anything suspicious. He would fly.
A late supper with Ralph Mandy
had seemed all right. Reba McClane knew she had to tell him sometime, and she
didn't believe in leaving things hanging.
Actually, she thought Mandy knew
what was coming when she insisted on going dutch.
She told him in the car as he
took her home; that it was no big deal, she'd had a lot of fun with him and
wanted to be his friend, but she was involved with somebody now.
Maybe he was hurt a little, but
she knew he was relieved a little too. He was pretty good about it, she
thought.
At her door he didn't ask to come
in. He did ask to kiss her goodbye, and she responded gladly. He opened her
door and gave her the keys. He waited until she was inside and had closed the
door and locked it.
When he turned around Dolarhyde
shot him in the throat and twice in the chest. Three putts from the silenced
pistol. A scooter is louder.
Dolarhyde lifted Mandy's body
easily, laid him between the shrubs and the house and left him there.
Seeing Reba kiss Mandy had
stabbed Dolarhyde deep. Then the pain left him for good.
He still looked and sounded like
Francis Dolarhyde-the Dragon was a very good actor; he played Dolarhyde well.
Reba was washing her face when
she heard the doorbell. It rang four times before she got there. She touched
the chain, but didn't take it off.
"Who is it?"
"Francis Dolarhyde."
She eased the door open, still on
the chain. "Tell me again."
"Dolarhyde. It's me."
She knew it was. She took off the
chain.
Reba did not like surprises.
"I thought you said you'd call me, D."
"I would have. But this is
an emergency, really," he said, clapping the chloroformed cloth over her face
as he stepped inside.
The street was empty. Most of the
houses were dark. He carried her to the van. Ralph Mandy's feet stuck out of
the shrubbery into the yard. Dolarhyde didn't bother with him anymore.
She woke on the ride. She was on
her side, her cheek in the dusty carpet of the van, transmission whine loud in
her ear.
She tried to bring her hands to
her face. The movement mashed her bosom. Her forearms were stuck together.
She felt them with her face. They
were bound together from her elbows to her wrists with what felt like soft
strips of cloth. Her legs were tied the same way from knees to ankles.
Something was across her mouth.
What . . . what . . . ? D. was at
the door, and then . . . She remembered twisting her face away and the terrible
strength of him. Oh Lord . . . what was it . . . ? D. was at the door and then
she was choking something cold and she tried to twist her face away but there
was a terrible grip on her head.
She was in D.'s van now. She
recognized the resonances. The van was going. Fear ballooned in her. Her
instinct said be quiet, but the fumes were in her throat, chloroform and
gasoline. She retched against the gag.
D.'s voice. "It won't be
long now."
She felt a turn and they were on
gravel now, rocks pinging under the fenders and floorboard.
He's crazy. All right. That's it:
Crazy.
"Crazy" is a fearsome
word.
What was it? Ralph Mandy. He must
have seen them at her house. It set him off.
Christ Jesus, get it all ready. A
man had tried to slap her once at Reiker Institute. She was quiet and he
couldn't find her - he couldn't see either. This one could fucking well see.
Get it all ready. Get ready to talk. God he could kill me with this gag in my
mouth. God he could be killing me and not understand what I was saying.
Be ready. Have it all ready and
don't say "Huh?" Tell him he can back out, no damage. I won't tell.
Be passive as long as you can. If you can't be passive, wait until you can find
his eyes.
The van stopped. The van rocked
as he got out. Side door sliding open. Grass and hot tires on the air.
Crickets. He came in the van.
In spite of herself she squealed
into the gag and twisted her face away from him when he touched her.
Soft pats on the shoulder didn't
stop her writhing. A stinging slap across the face did.
She tried to talk into the gag.
She was lifted, carried. His footsteps hollow on the ramp. She was sure where
she was now. His house. Where in his house? Clock ticking to the right. Rug,
then floor. The bedroom where they did it. She was sinking in his arms, felt
the bed under her.
She tried to talk into the gag.
He was leaving. Noise outside. Van door slammed. Here he comes. Setting
something on the floor - metal cans.
She smelled gasoline.
"Reba." D.'s voice all
right, but so calm. So terribly calm and strange. "Reba, I don't know what
to . . . say to you. You felt so good, and you don't know what I did for you.
And I was wrong, Reba. You made me weak and then you hurt me."
She tried to talk into the gag.
"If I untie you and let you
sit up, will you be good? Don't try to run. I can catch you. Will you be
good?"
She twisted her head toward the
voice to nod.
A touch of cold steel against her
skin, whisper of a knife through cloth and her arms were free. Now her legs.
Her cheeks were wet where the gag came off.
Carefully and slowly she sat up
in the bed. Take your best shot.
"D.," she said, "I
didn't know you cared this much about me. I'm glad you feel that way but, see,
you seared me with this."
No answer. She knew he was there.
"D., was it old dumb Ralph
Mandy that made you mad? Did you see him at my house? That's it, isn't it? I
was telling him I don't want to see him anymore. Because I want to see you. I'm
never going to see Ralph again."
"Ralph died," Dolarhyde
said. "I don't think he liked it very much
Fantasy. He's making it up Jesus
do I hope. "I've never hurt you, D. I never wanted to. Let's just be
friends and fuck and have a good time and forget about this,"
"Shut up," he said
calmly. "I'll tell you something. The most important thing you'll ever
hear. Sermon-on-the-Mount important. Ten-Commandments important. Got it?"
"Yes, D. I-"
"Shut up. Reba, some
remarkable events have happened in Birmingham and Atlanta. Do you know what I'm
talking about?"
She shook her head.
"It's been on the news a
lot. Two groups of people were changed. Leeds. And Jacobi. The police think
they were murdered. Do you know now?"
She started to shake her head.
Then she did know and slowly she nodded.
"Do you know what they call
the Being that visited those people? You can say."
"The Tooth-"
A hand gripped her face, shutting
off the sound.
"Think carefully and answer
correctly."
"It's Dragon something.
Dragon . . . Red Dragon."
He was close to her. She could
feel his breath on her face.
"I AM THE DRAGON."
Leaping back, driven by the
volume and terrible timbre of the voice, she slammed against the headboard.
"The Dragon wants you, Reba.
He always has. I didn't want to give you to Him. I did a thing for you today so
He couldn't have you. And I was wrong."
This was D., she could talk to D.
"Please. Please don't let him have me. You won't, please don't, you
wouldn't - I'm for you. Keep me with you. You like me, I know you do."
"I haven't made up my mind
yet. Maybe I can't help giving you to Him. I don't know. I'm going to see if
you do as I tell you. Will you? Can I depend on you?"
"I'll try. I will try. Don't
scare me too much or I can't."
"Get up, Reba. Stand by the
bed. Do you know where you are in the room?"
She nodded.
"You know where you are in
the house, don't you? You wandered around in the house while I was asleep,
didn't you?"
"Asleep?"
"Don't be stupid. When we
spent the night here. You went through the house, didn't you? Did you find
something odd? Did you take it and show it to somebody? Did you do that,
Reba?"
"I just went outside. You
were asleep and I went outside. I promise."
"Then you know where the
front door is, don't you?"
She nodded.
"Reba, feel on my chest.
Bring your hands up slowly."
Try for his eyes?
His thumb and fingers touched
lightly on each side of her windpipe. "Don't do what you're thinking, or
I'll squeeze. Just feel on my chest. Just at my throat. Feel the key on the
chain? Take it off over my head. Careful . . . that's right. Now I'm going to
see if I can trust you. Go close the front door and lock it and bring me back the
key. Go ahead. I'll wait right here. Don't try to run. I can catch you.
She held the key in her hand, the
chain tapping against her thigh. It was harder navigating in her shoes, but she
kept them on. The ticking clock helped.
Rug, then floor, rug again. Loom
of the sofa. Go to the right.
What's my best shot? Which? Fool
along with him or go for it? Did the others fool along with him? She felt dizzy
from deep breathing. Don't be dizzy. Don't be dead.
It depends on whether the door is
open. Find out where he is.
"Am I going right?" She
knew she was.
"It's about five more
steps." The voice was from the bedroom all right.
She felt air on her face. The
door was half-open. She kept her body between the door and the voice behind
her. She slipped the key in the keyhole below the knob. On the outside.
Now. Through the door fast making
herself pull it to and turn the key. Down the ramp, no cane, trying to remember
where the van was, running. Running. Into what-a bush-screaming now. Screaming
"Help me. Help me. Help me, help me." On gravel running. A truck horn
far away. Highway that way, a fast walk and trot and run, fast as she could,
veering when she felt grass instead of gravel, zigging down the lane.
Behind her footsteps coming fast
and hard, running in the gravel. She stooped and picked up a handful of rocks,
waited until he was close and flung them, heard them thump on him.
A shove on the shoulder spun her,
a big arm under her chin, around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, blood roared
in her ears. She kicked backward, hit a shin as it became increasingly quiet.
In two hours, the list of white
male employees twenty to fifty years old who owned vans was completed. There
were twenty-six names on it.
Missouri DMV provided hair color
from driver's-licence information, but it was not used as an exclusionary
factor; the Dragon might wear a wig.
Fisk's secretary, Miss Trillman,
made copies of the list and passed them around.
Lieutenant Fogel was going down
the list of names when his beeper went off.
Fogel spoke to his headquarters
briefly on the telephone, then put his hand over the receiver. "Mr.
Crawford . . . Jack, one Ralph Mandy, white male, thirty-eight, was found shot
to death a few minutes ago in University City - that's in the middle of town,
close to Washington University - he was in the front yard of a house occupied
by a woman named Reba McClane. The neighbors said she works for Baeder. Her
door's unlocked, she's not home."
"Dandridge!" Crawford
called. "Reba McClane, what about her?"
"She works in the darkroom.
She's blind. She's from someplace in Colorado-"
"You know a Ralph
Mandy?"
"Mandy?" Dandridge
said. "Randy Mandy?"
"Ralph Mandy, he work
here?"
A check of the roll showed he
didn't.
"Coincidence maybe," Fogel
said.
"Maybe," Crawford said.
"I hope nothing's happened
to Reba," Miss Trillman said.
"You know her?" Graham
said.
"I've talked with her
several times."
"What about Mandy?"
"I don't know him. The only
man I've seen her with, I saw her getting into Mr. Dolarhyde's van."
"Mr. Dolarhyde's van, Miss
Trillman? What color is Mr. Dolarhyde's van?"
"Let's see. Dark brown, or
maybe black."
"Where does Mr. Dolarhyde
work?" Crawford asked.
"He's production
supervisor," Fisk said.
"Where's his office?"
"Right down the hall."
Crawford turned to speak to
Graham, hut he was already moving. Mr, Dolarhyde's office was locked. A passkey
from Maintenance worked.
Graham reached in and flipped on
the light. He stood still in the doorway while his eyes went over the room. It
was extremely neat. No personal items were anywhere in sight. The bookshelf
held only technical manuals.
The desk lamp was on the left
side of the chair, so he was right-handed. Need a left thumbprint fast off a
right-handed man.
"Let's toss it for a clipboard,"
he said to Crawford, behind him in the hall. "He'll use his left thumb on
the clip."
They had started on the drawers
when the desk appointment calendar caught Graham's eye. He flipped back through
the scribbled pages to Saturday, June 28, the date of the Jacobi killings.
The calendar was unmarked on the
Thursday and Friday before that weekend.
He flipped forward to the last
week in July. The Thursday and Friday were blank. There was a note on
Wednesday. It said: "Am 552 3:45 - 6:15."
Graham copied the entry. "I
want to find out where this flight goes."
"Let me do it, you go ahead
here," Crawford said. He went to a telephone across the hall.
Graham was looking at a tube of
denture adhesive in the bottom desk drawer when Crawford called from the door.
"It goes to Atlanta, Will.
Let's take him out."
Water cold on Reba's face,
running in her hair. Dizzy. Something hard under her, sloping. She turned her
head. Wood under her. A cold wet towel wiped her face.
"Are you all right,
Reba?" Dolarhyde's calm voice. She shied from the sound.
"Uhhhh."
"Breathe deeply."
A minute passed.
"Do you think you can stand
up? Try to stand up."
She could stand with his arm
around her. Her stomach heaved. He waited until the spasm passed.
"Up the ramp. Do you
remember where you are?"
She nodded.
"Take the key out of the
door, Reba. Come inside. Now lock it and put the key around my neck. Hang it
around my neck. Good. Let's just be sure it's locked."
She heard the knob rattle.
"That's good. Now go in the
bedroom, you know the way." She stumbled and went down on her knees, her
head bowed. He lifted her by the arms and supported her into the bedroom.
"Sit in this chair."
She sat.
"GIVE HER TO ME NOW."
She struggled to rise; big hands
on her shoulders held her down.
"Sit still or I can't keep
Him off you," Dolarhyde said. Her mind was coming back. It didn't want to.
"Please try," she said.
"Reba, it's all over for
me."
He was up, doing something. The
odor of gasoline was very strong.
"Put out your hand. Feel
this. Don't grab it, feel it."
She felt something like steel
nostrils, slick inside. The muzzle of a gun.
"That's a shotgun, Reba. A
twelve-gauge magnum. Do you know what it will do?"
She nodded.
"Take your hand down."
The cold muzzle rested in the hollow of her throat.
"Reba, I wish I could have
trusted you. I wanted to trust you." He sounded like he was crying.
"You felt so good."
He was crying.
"So did you, D. I love it.
Please don't hurt me now."
"It's all over for me. I
can't leave you to Him. You know what He'll do?"
Bawling now.
"Do you know what He'll do?
He'll bite you to death. Better you go with me."
She heard a match struck, smelled
sulfur, heard a whoosh. Heat in the room. Smoke. Fire. The thing she feared
most in the world. Fire. Anything was better than that. She hoped the first
shot killed her. She tensed her legs to run.
Blubbering.
"Oh, Reba, I can't stand to
watch you burn."
The muzzle left her throat.
Both barrels of the shotgun went
off at once as she came to her feet.
Ears numbed, she thought she was
shot, thought she was dead, felt the heavy thump on the floor more than she
heard it.
Smoke now and the crackle of
flames. Fire. Fire brought her to herself. She felt heat on her arms and face.
Out. She stepped on legs, stumbled choking into the foot of the bed.
Stoop low, they said, under the
smoke. Don't run, you'll bump into things and die.
She was locked in. Locked in.
Walking, stooping low, fingers trailing on the floor, she found legs - other
end - she found hair, a hairy flap, put her hand in something soft below the
hair. Only pulp, sharp bone splinters and a loose eye in it.
Key around his neck . . . hurry.
Both hands on the chain, legs under her, snatch. The chain broke and she fell
backward, scrambling up again. Turned around, confused. Trying to feel, trying
to listen with her numbed ears over the crackle of the flames. Side of the bed
. . . which side? She stumbled on the body, tried to listen.
BONG, BONG, the clock striking.
BONG, BONG, into the living room, BONG, BONG, take a right.
Throat seared with smoke. BONG
BONG. Door here. Under the knob. Don't drop it. Click the lock. Snatch it open.
Air. Down the ramp. Air. Collapsed in the grass. Up again on hands and knees,
crawling.
She came up on her knees to clap,
picked up the house echo and crawled away from it, breathing deep until she
could stand, walk, run until she hit something, run again.
Locating Francis Dolarhyde’s
house was not so easy. The address listed at Gateway was a post-office box in
St. Charles.
Even the St. Charles sheriff's
department had to check a service map at the power-company office to be sure.
The sheriff's department welcomed
St. Louis SWAT to the other side of the river, and the caravan moved quietly up
State Highway 94. A deputy beside Graham in the lead car showed the way.
Crawford leaned between them from the back seat and sucked at something in his
teeth. They met light traffic at the north end of St. Charles, a pickup full of
children, a Greyhound bus, a tow truck.
They saw the glow as they cleared
the northern city limits.
"That's it!" the deputy
said. "That's where it is!"
Graham put his foot down. The
glow brightened and swelled as they roared up the highway.
Crawford snapped his fingers for
the microphone.
"All units, that's his house
burning. Watch it now. He may be coming out. Sheriff, let us have a roadblock
here, if you will."
A thick column of sparks and
smoke leaned southeast over the fields, hanging over them now.
"Here," the deputy
said, "turn in on this gravel."
They saw the woman then,
silhouetted black against the fire, saw her as she heard them and raised her
arms to them.
And then the great fire blasted
upward, outward, burning beams and window frames describing slow high arcs into
the night sky, the blazing van rocked over on its side, orange tracery of the
burning trees suddenly blown out and dark. The ground shuddered as the
explosion whump rocked the police cars.
The woman was face down in the
road. Crawford and Graham and the deputies out, running to her as fire rained
in the road, some running past her with their weapons drawn.
Crawford took Reba from a deputy
batting sparks from her hair.
He held her arms, face close to
hers, red in the firelight.
"Francis Dolarhyde," he
said. He shook her gently. "Francis Dolarhyde, where is he?"
"He's in there," she
said, raising her stained hand toward the heat, letting it fall. "He's
dead in there."
"You know that?"
Crawford peered into her sightless eyes.
"I was with him."
"Tell me, please."
"He shot himself in the
face. I put my hand in it. He set fire to the house. He shot himself. I put my
hand in it. He was on the floor. I put my hand in it can I sit down?"
"Yes," Crawford said.
He got into the back of a police car with her. He put his arms around her and
let her cry into his jowl.
Graham stood in the road and
watched the flames until his face was red and sore.
The winds aloft whipped smoke
across the moon.
The wind in the morning was warm
and wet. It blew wisps of cloud over the blackened chimneys where Dolarhyde's
house had stood. Thin smoke blew flat across the fields.
A few raindrops struck coals and
exploded in tiny puffs of steam and ashes.
A fire truck stood by, its light
revolving.
S. F. Aynesworth, FBI section
chief, Explosives, stood with Graham upwind of the ruins, pouring coffee from a
thermos.
Aynesworth winced as the local
fire marshal reached into the ashes with a rake.
"Thank God it's still too
hot for him in there," he said out of the side of his mouth. He had been
carefully cordial to the local authorities. To Graham, he spoke his mind.
"I got to wade it, hell. This place'll look like a fucking turkey farm
soon as all the special deputies and constables finish their pancakes and take
a crap. They'll be right on down to help."
Until Aynesworth's beloved bomb
van arrived from Washington, he had to make do with what he could bring on the
plane. He pulled a faded Marine Corps duffel bag out of the trunk of a patrol
car and unpacked his Nomex underwear and asbestos boots and coveralls.
"What did it look like when
it went up, Will?"
"A flash of intense light
that died down. Then it looked darker at the base. A lot of stuff was going up,
window frames, flat pieces of the roof, and chunks flying sideways, tumbling in
the fields. There was a shock wave, and the wind after. It blew out and sucked
back in again. It looked like it almost blew the fire out."
"The fire was going good
when it blew?"
"Yeah, it was through the
roof and out the windows upstairs and down. The trees were burning."
Aynesworth recruited two local
firemen to stand by with a hose, and a third dressed in asbestos stood by with
a winch line in case something fell on him.
He cleared the basement steps,
now open to the sky, and went down into the tangle of black timbers. He could
stay only a few minutes at a time. He made eight trips.
All he got for his effort was one
flat piece of torn metal, but it seemed to make him happy.
Red-faced and wet with sweat, he
stripped off his asbestos clothing and sat on the running board of the fire
truck with a fireman's raincoat over his shoulders.
He laid the flat piece of metal
on the ground and blew away a film of ash.
"Dynamite," he told
Graham. "Look here, see the fern pattern in the metal? This stuff's the
right gauge for a trunk or a footlocker. That's probably it. Dynamite in a
footlocker. It didn't go off in the basement, though. Looks like the ground
floor to me. See where the tree's cut there where that marble tabletop hit it?
Blown out sideways. The dynamite was in something that kept the fire off of it
for a while."
"How about remains?"
"There may not be a lot, but
there's always something. We've got a lot of sifting to do. We'll find him.
I'll give him to you in a small sack."
# # #
A sedative had finally put Reba
McClane to sleep at DePaul Hospital shortly after dawn. She wanted the
policewoman to sit close beside her bed. Several times through the morning she
woke and reached out for the officer's hand.
When she asked for breakfast,
Graham brought it in.
Which way to go? Sometimes it was
easier for them if you were impersonal. With Reba McClane, he didn't think so.
He told her who he was.
"Do you know him?" she
asked the policewoman.
Graham passed the officer his
credentials. She didn't need them.
"I know he's a federal
officer, Miss McClane."
She told him everything, finally.
All about her time with Francis Dolarhyde. Her throat was sore, and she stopped
frequently to suck cracked ice.
He asked her the unpleasant
questions and she took him through it, once waving him out the door while the
policewoman held the basin to catch her breakfast.
She was pale and her face was
scrubbed and shiny when he came back into the room.
He asked the last of it and closed
his notebook.
"I won't put you through
this again," he said, "but I'd like to come back by. Just to say hi
and see how you're doing."
"How could you help it? - a
charmer like me."
For the first time he saw tears
and realized where it ate her.
"Would you excuse us for a
minute, officer?" Graham said. He took Reba's hand.
"Look here. There was plenty
wrong with Dolarhyde, but there's nothing wrong with you. You said he was kind
and thoughtful to you. I believe it. That's what you brought out in him. At the
end, he couldn't kill you and he couldn't watch you die. People who study this
kind of thing say he was trying to stop. Why? Because you helped him. That
probably saved some lives. You didn't draw a freak. You drew a man with a freak
on his back. Nothing wrong with you, kid. If you let yourself believe there is,
you're a sap. I'm coming back to see you in a day or so. I have to look at cops
all the time, and I need relief – try to do something about your hair there.”
She shook her head and waved him
toward the door. Maybe she grinned a little, he couldn’t be sure.
# # #
Graham called Molly from the St.
Louis FBI office. Willy's grandfather answered the telephone.
"It's Will Graham,
Mama," he said. "Hello, Mr. Graham."
Willy's grandparents always
called him "Mr. Graham."
"Mama said he killed
himself. She was looking at Donahue and they broke in with it. Damn lucky
thing. Saved you fellows a lot of trouble catching him. Saves us taxpayers
footing any more bills for this thing too. Was he really white?"
"Yes sir. Blond. Looked
Scandinavian."
Willy's grandparents were
Scandinavian.
"May I speak to Molly,
please?"
"Are you going back down to
Florida now?"
"Soon. Is Molly there?"
"Mama, he wants to speak to
Molly. She's in the bathroom, Mr. Graham. My grandboy's eating breakfast again.
Been out riding in that good air. You ought to see that little booger eat. I
bet he's gained ten pounds. Here she is."
"Hello."
"Hi, hotshot."
"Good news, huh?"
"Looks like it."
"I was out in the garden.
Mamamma came out and told me when she saw it on TV. When did you find
out?"
"Late last night."
"Why didn't you call
me?"
"Mamamma was probably
asleep."
"No, she was watching Johnny
Carson. I can't tell you, Will. I'm so glad you didn't have to catch him."
"I'll be here a little longer."
"Four or five days?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe not
that long. I want to see you, kid."
"I want to see you too, when
you get through with everything you need to do."
"Today's Wednesday. By
Friday I ought to-"
"Will, Mamamma has all
Willy's uncles and aunts coming down from Seattle next week, and-"
"Fuck Mamamma. What is this
'Mamamma' anyway?"
"When Willy was real little,
he couldn't say-"
"Come home with me."
"Will, I've waited for
you. They never get to see Willy and a few more days-"
"Come yourself. Leave Willy
there, and your ex-mother-in-law can stick him on a plane next week. Tell you
what - let's stop in New Orleans. There's a place called-"
"I don't think so. I've been
working - just part-time - at this western store in town, and I have to give
them a little notice."
"What's wrong, Molly?"
"Nothing. Nothing's wrong .
. . I got so sad, Will. You know I came up here after Willy's father
died." She always said "Willy's father" as though it were an
office. She never used his name. "And we were all together - I got myself
together, I got calm. I've gotten myself together now, too, and I-"
"Small difference: I'm not
dead."
"Don't be that way."
"What way? Don't be what
way?"
"You're mad."
Graham closed his eyes for a
moment.
"Hello."
"I'm not mad, Molly. You do
what you want to. I'll call you when things wind up here."
"You could come up
here."
"I don't think so."
"Why not? There's plenty of
room. Mamamma would-"
"Molly, they don't like me
and you know why. Every time they look at me, I remind them."
"That's not fair and it's
not true either."
Graham was very tired.
"Okay. They're full of shit
and they make me sick - try that one."
"Don't say that."
"They want the boy. Maybe
they like you all right, probably they do, if they ever think about it. But
they want the boy and they'll take you. They don't want me and I could care
less. I want you. In Florida. Willy too, when he gets tired of his pony."
"You'll feel better when you
get some sleep."
"I doubt it. Look, I'll call
you when I know something here."
"Sure." She hung up.
"Ape shit,"
Graham said. "Ape shit."
Crawford stuck his head in the
door. "Did I hear you say 'ape shit'?"
"You did."
"Well, cheer up. Aynesworth
called in from the site. He has something for you. He said we ought to come on
out, he's got some static from the locals."
Aynesworth was pouring ashes
carefully into new paint cans when Graham and Crawford got to the black ruin
where Dolarhyde's house had stood.
He was covered with soot and a
large blister puffed under his ear. Special Agent Janowitz from Explosives was
working down in the cellar.
A tall sack of a man fidgeted
beside a dusty Oldsmobile in the drive. He intercepted Crawford and Graham as
they crossed the yard.
"Are you Crawford?"
"That's right."
"I'm Robert L. Dulaney. I'm
the coroner and this is my jurisdiction." He showed them his card. It said
"Vote for Robert L. Dulaney."
Crawford waited.
"Your man here has some
evidence that should have been turned over to me. He's kept me waiting for
nearly an hour."
"Sorry for the
inconvenience, Mr. Dulaney. He was following my instructions. Why don't you
have a seat in your car and I'll clear this up.
Dulaney started after them.
Crawford turned around.
"You'll excuse us, Mr. Dulaney. Have a seat in your car."
Section Chief Aynesworth was
grinning, his teeth white in his sooty face. He had been sieving ashes all
morning.
"As section chief, it gives
me great pleasure-"
"To pull your prong, we all
know that," Janowitz said, climbing from the black tangle of the cellar.
"Silence in the ranks,
Indian Janowitz. Fetch the items of interest." He tossed Janowitz a set of
car keys.
From the trunk of an FBI sedan
Janowitz brought a long cardboard box. A shotgun, the stock burned off and
barrels twisted by the heat, was wired to the bottom of the box. A smaller box
contained a blackened automatic pistol.
"The pistol came out
better," Aynesworth said. "Ballistics may be able to make a match
with it. Come on, Janowitz, get to it."
Aynesworth took three plastic
freezer bags from him.
"Front and center,
Graham." For a moment the humor left Aynesworth's face. This was a
hunter's ritual, like smearing Graham's forehead with blood.
"That was a real sly show,
podna." Aynesworth put the bags in Graham's hands.
One bag contained five inches of
a charred human femur and the ball of a hip. Another contained a wristwatch.
The third held the teeth.
The plate was black and broken
and only half was there, but that half contained the unmistakable pegged
lateral incisor.
Graham supposed he should say
something. "Thanks. Thanks a lot."
His head swam briefly and he
relaxed all over.
". . . museum piece,"
Aynesworth was saying. "We have to turn it over to the turkey, don't we,
Jack?"
"Yeah. But there're some
pros in the St. Louis coroner's office. They'll come over and make good
impressions. We'll have those."
Crawford and the others huddled
with the coroner beside his car. Graham was alone with the house. He listened
to the wind in the chimneys. He hoped Bloom would come here when he was well.
Probably he would.
Graham wanted to know about
Dolarhyde. He wanted to know what happened here, what bred the Dragon. But he
had had enough for now.
A mockingbird lit on the top of a
chimney and whistled.
Graham whistled back.
He was going home.
Graham smiled when he felt the
jet's big push rocket him up and away from St. Louis, turning across the sun's
path south and east at last toward home.
Molly and Willy would be there.
"Let's don't jack around
about who's sorry for what. I'll pick you up in Marathon, kiddo," she said
on the phone.
In time he hoped he would
remember the few good moments - the satisfaction of seeing people at work who
were deeply committed to their skills. He supposed you could find that anywhere
if you knew enough about what you were watching.
It would have been presumptuous
to thank Lloyd Bowman and Beverly Katz, so he just told them on the telephone
that he was glad to have worked with them again.
One thing bothered him a little:
the way he felt when Crawford turned from the telephone in Chicago and said,
"It's Gateway."
Possibly that was the most
intense and savage joy that had ever burst in him. It was unsettling to know
that the happiest moment of his life had come then, in that stuffy jury room in
the city of Chicago. When even before he knew, he knew.
He didn't tell Lloyd Bowman how
it felt; he didn't have to. "You know, when his theorem rang the cherries,
Pythagoras gave one hundred oxen to the Muse," Bowman said. "Nothing
sweeter, is there? Don't answer - it lasts better if you don't spend it
talking."
Graham grew more impatient the
closer he got to home and to Molly. In Miami he had to go out on the apron to
board Aunt Lula, the old DC-3 that flew to Marathon.
He liked DC-3's. He liked
everything today.
Aunt Lula was built when
Graham was five years old and her wings were always dirty with a film of oil
that blew back from the engines. He had great confidence in her. He ran to her
as though she had landed in a jungle clearing to rescue him.
Islamorada's lights were coming
on as the island passed under the wing. Graham could still see whitecaps on the
Atlantic side. In minutes they were descending to Marathon.
It was like the first time he
came to Marathon. He had come aboard Aunt Lula that time too, and often
afterward he went to the airfield at dusk to watch her coming in, slow and
steady, flaps down, fire flickering out her exhausts and all the passengers
safe behind their lighted windows.
The takeoffs were good to watch
as well, but when the old airplane made her great arc to the north it left him
sad and empty and the air was acrid with good-byes. He learned to watch only
the landings and hellos.
That was before Molly.
With a final grunt, the airplane
swung onto the apron. Graham saw Molly and Willy standing behind the fence,
under the floodlights.
Willy was solidly planted in
front of her. He'd stay there until Graham joined them. Only then would he
wander along, examining whatever interested him. Graham liked him for that.
Molly was the same height as
Graham, five feet ten inches. A level kiss in public carries a pleasant jolt,
possibly because level kisses usually are exchanged in bed.
Willy offered to carry his
suitcase. Graham gave him the suit bag instead.
Riding home to Sugarloaf Key,
Molly driving, Graham remembered the things picked out by the headlights,
imagined the rest.
When he opened the car door in
the yard, he could hear the sea. Willy went into the house, holding the suit
bag on top of his head, the bottom flapping against the backs of his legs.
Graham stood in the yard absently
brushing mosquitoes away from his face.
Molly put her hand on his cheek.
"What you ought to do is come on in the house before you get eaten
up."
He nodded. His eyes were wet.
She waited a moment longer,
tucked her head and peered up at him, wiggling her eyebrows. "Tanqueray
martinis, steaks, hugging and stuff. Right this way . . . and the light bill
and the water bill and lengthy conversations with my child," she added out
of the side of her mouth.
Graham and Molly wanted very much
for it to be the same again between them, to go on as they had before.
When they saw that it was not the
same, the unspoken knowledge lived with them like unwanted company in the
house. The mutual assurances they tried to exchange in the dark and in the day
passed through some refraction that made them miss the mark.
Molly had never looked better to
him. From a painful distance, he admired her unconscious grace.
She tried to be good to him, but
she had been to Oregon and she had raised the dead.
Willy felt it and he was cool to
Graham, maddeningly polite.
A letter came from Crawford.
Molly brought it in the mail and did not mention it.
It contained a picture of the
Sherman family, printed from movie film. Not everything had burned, Crawford's
note explained. A search of the fields around the house had turned this picture
up, along with a few other things the explosion had blown far from the fire.
"These people were probably
on his itinerary," Crawford wrote. "Safe now. Thought you'd like to
know."
Graham showed it to Molly.
"See? That's why," he
said. "That's why it was worth it."
"I know," she said.
"I understand that, really I do."
The bluefish were running under
the moon. Molly packed suppers and they fished and they built fires, and none
of it was any good.
Grandpa and Mamamma sent Willy a
picture of his pony and he tacked it to the wall in his room.
The fifth day home was the last
day before Graham and Molly would go back to work in Marathon. They fished in
the surf, walking a quarter-mile around the curving beach to a place where they
had luck before.
Graham had decided to talk to
both of them together.
The expedition did not begin
well. Willy pointedly put aside the rod Graham had rigged for him and brought
the new surf-casting rod his grandfather sent home with him.
They fished for three hours in
silence. Graham opened his mouth to speak several times, but it didn't seem
right.
He was tired of being disliked.
Graham caught four snappers,
using sand fleas for bait. Willy caught nothing. He was casting a big Rapala
with three treble hooks which his grandfather had given him. He was fishing too
fast, casting again and again, retrieving too fast, until he was red-faced and
his T-shirt stuck to him.
Graham waded into the water,
scooped sand in the backwash of a wave, and came up with two sand fleas, their
legs waving from their shells.
"How about one of these,
partner?" He held out a sand flea to Willy.
"I'll use the Rapala. It was
my father's, did you know that?"
"No," Graham said. He
glanced at Molly.
She hugged her knees and looked
far off at a frigate bird sailing high.
She got up and brushed off the
sand. "I'll go fix some sandwiches," she said.
When Molly had gone, Graham was
tempted to talk to the boy by himself. No. Willy would feel whatever his mother
felt. He'd wait and get them both together when she came back. He'd do it this
time.
She wasn't gone long and she came
back without the sandwiches, walking swiftly on the packed sand above the surf.
"Jack Crawford's on the
phone. I told him you'd call him back, but he said it's urgent," she said,
examining a fingemail. "Better hurry."
Graham blushed. He stuck the butt
of his rod in the sand and trotted toward the dunes. It was quicker than going
around the beach if you carried nothing to catch in the brush.
He heard a low whirring sound
carried on the wind and, wary of a rattler, he scanned the ground as he went
into the scrub cedar.
He saw boots beneath the brush,
the glint of a lens and a flash of khaki rising.
He looked into the yellow eyes of
Francis Dolarhyde and fear raised the hammers of his heart.
Snick of a pistol action working,
an automatic coming up and Graham kicked at it, struck it as the muzzle bloomed
pale yellow in the sun, and the pistol flew into the brush. Graham on his back,
something burning in the left side of his chest, slid headfirst down the dune
onto the beach.
Dolarhyde leaped high to land on
Graham's stomach with both feet and he had the knife out now and never looked
up at the thin screaming from the water's edge. He pinned Graham with his
knees, raised the knife high and grunted as he brought it down. The blade
missed Graham's eye and crunched deep into his cheek.
Dolarhyde rocked forward and put
his weight on the handle of the knife to shove it through Graham's head.
The rod whistled as Molly swung
it hard at Dolarhyde's face. The big Rapala's hooks sank solidly in his cheek
and the reel screamed, paying out line as she drew back to strike again.
He growled, grabbed at his face
as she hit him, and the treble hooks jammed into his hand as well. One hand
free, one hand hooked to his face, he tugged the knife out and started after
her.
Graham rolled over, got to his
knees, then his feet, eyes wild and choking blood he ran, ran from Dolarhyde,
ran until he collapsed.
Molly ran for the dunes, Willy
ahead of her. Dolarhyde was coming, dragging tile rod. It caught on a bush and
pulled him howling to a stop before he thought to cut the line.
"Run baby, run baby, run
baby! Don't look back," she gasped. Her legs were long and she shoved the
boy ahead of her, the crashing ever closer in the brush behind them.
They had one hundred yards on him
when they left the dunes, seventy yards when they reached the house. Scrambling
up the stairs. Clawing in Will's closet.
To Willy, "Stay here."
Down again to meet him. Down to
the kitchen, not ready, fumbling with the speedloader.
She forgot the stance and she
forgot the front sight but she got a good two-handed grip on the pistol and as
the door exploded inward she blew a rat hole through his thigh -
"Muhner!" - and she shot him in the face as he slid down the door
facing and she shot him in the face as he sat on the floor and she ran to him
and shot him twice in the face as he sprawled against the wall, scalp down to
his chin and his hair on fire.
# # #
Willy tore up a sheet and went to
look for Will. His legs were shaking and he fell several times crossing the
yard.
The sheriff's deputies and ambulances
came before Molly ever thought to call them. She was taking a shower when they
came in the house behind their pistols. She was scrubbing hard at the flecks of
blood and bone on her face and hair and she couldn't answer when a deputy tried
to talk to her through the shower curtain.
One of the deputies finally
picked up the dangling telephone receiver and talked to Crawford in Washington,
who had heard the shots and summoned them.
"I don't know, they're
bringing him in now," the deputy said. He looked out the window as the
litter passed. "It don't look good to me," he said.
On the wall at the foot of the
bed there was a clock with numbers large enough to read through the drugs and
the pain.
When Will Graham could open his
right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was - an intensive-care unit. He
knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would
pass.
That's what it was there for.
It said four o'clock. He had no
idea which four o'clock and he didn't care, as long as the hands were moving.
He drifted away.
The clock said eight when he
opened his eye again.
Someone was to the side of him.
Cautiously he turned his eye. It was Molly, looking out the window. She was
thin. He tried to speak, but a great ache filled the left side of his head when
he moved his jaw. His head and his chest did not throb together. It was more of
a syncopation. He made a noise as she left the room.
The window was light when they
pulled and tugged at him and did things that made the cords in his neck stand
out.
Yellow light when he saw
Crawford's face over him.
Graham managed to wink. When
Crawford grinned, Graham could see a piece of spinach between his teeth.
Odd. Crawford eschewed most
vegetables.
Graham made writing motions on
the sheet beneath his hand.
Crawford slid his notebook under
Graham's hand and put a pen between his fingers.
"Willy OK," he wrote.
"Yeah, he's fine,"
Crawford said. "Molly too. She's been in here while you were asleep.
Dolarhyde's dead, Will. I promise you, he's dead. I took the prints myself and
had Price match them. There's no question. He's dead."
Graham drew a question mark on
the pad.
"We'll get into it. I'll be
here, I can tell you the whole thing when you feel good. They only give me five
minutes."
"Now," Graham wrote.
"Has the doctor talked to
you? No? About you first - you'll be okay. Your eye's just swollen shut from a
deep stab wound in the face. They've got it fixed, but it'll take time. They
took out your spleen. But who needs a spleen? Price left his in Burma in
'41."
A nurse pecked on the glass.
"I've got to go. They don't
respect credentials, nothing, around here. They just throw you out when the
time's up. See you later."
Molly was in the ICU waiting
room. A lot of tired people were.
Crawford went to her. "Molly
. . ."
"Hello, Jack," she
said. "You're looking really well. Want to give him a face
transplant?"
"Don't, Molly."
"Did you look at him?"
"Yes."
"I didn't think I could look
at him, but I did."
"They'll fix him up. The
doctor told me. They can do it. You want somebody to stay with you, Molly? I
brought Phyllis down, she-"
"No. Don't do anything else
for me."
She turned away, fumbling for a
tissue. He saw the letter when she opened her purse: expensive mauve stationery
that he had seen before.
Crawford hated this. He had to do
it.
"Molly."
"What is it?"
"Will got a letter?"
"Yes."
"Did the nurse give it to
you?"
"Yes, she gave it to me.
They're holding some flowers from all his friends in Washington, too."
"May I see the letter?"
"I'll give it to him when he
feels like it."
"Please let me see it."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't need to
hear from . . . that particular person.
Something was wrong with the
expression on his face and she looked down at the letter and dropped it, purse
and all. A lipstick rolled across the floor.
Stooping to pick up Molly's
things, Crawford heard her heels tap fast as she left him, abandoning her
purse.
He gave the purse to the charge
nurse.
Crawford knew it would be nearly
impossible for Lecter to get what he would need, but with Lecter he took no
chances.
He had an intern fluoroscope the
letter in the X-ray department. Crawford slit the envelope on all sides with a
penknife and examined its inside surface and the note for any stain or dust -
they would have lye for scrubbing at Chesapeake Hospital, and there was a
pharmacy.
Satisfied at last, he read it:
Dear Will,
Here we are, you and I, languishing in our hospitals. You have your pain
and I am without my books - the learned Dr. Chilton has seen to that.
We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise.
Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or
give me my books.
I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won't be very ugly.
I think of you often.
Hannibal
Lecter
The intern looked at his watch,
"Do you need me anymore?"
"No," Crawford said.
"Where's the incinerator?"
When Crawford returned in four
hours for the next visiting penod, Molly wasn't in the waiting room and she
wasn't in the intensive-care unit.
Graham was awake. He drew a
question mark on the pad at once. "D. dead how?" he wrote under it.
Crawford told him. Graham lay
still for a full minute. Then he wrote, "Lammed how?"
"Okay," Crawford said.
"St. Louis. Dolarhyde must have been looking for Reba MeClane. He came in
the lab while we were there and spotted us. His prints were on an open
furnace-room window - it wasn't reported until yesterday."
Graham tapped the pad.
"Bodv?"
"We think it was a guy named
Arnold Lang - he's missing. His car was found in Memphis. It had been wiped
down. They'll run me out in a minute. Let me give it to you in order.
"Dolarhyde knew we were
there. He gave us the slip at the plant and drove to a Servco Supreme station
at Lindbergh and U.S. 270. Arnold Lang worked there.
"Reba McClane said Dolarhyde
had a tiff with a service-station attendant on Saturday before last. We think
it was Lang.
"He snuffed Lang and took
his body to the house. Then he went by Reba MeClane's. She was in a clinch with
Ralph Mandy at the door. He shot Mandy and dragged him into the hedge."
The nurse came in.
"For God's sake, it's police
business," Crawford said. He talked fast as she pulled him by the coat
sleeve to the door. "He chloroformed Reba MeClane and took her to the
house. The body was there," Crawford said from the hall.
Graham had to wait four hours to
find out the rest.
"He gave her this and that,
you know, 'Will I kill you or not?' " Crawford said as he came in the
door.
"You know the routine about
the key hanging around his neck - that was to make sure she felt the body. So
she could tell us she certainly did feel a body. All right, it's this way and
that way. 'I can't stand to see you burn,' he says, and blows Lang's head off
with a twelve-gauge.
"Lang was perfect. He didn't
have any teeth anyway. Maybe Dolarhyde knew the maxillary arch survives fires a
lot of times - who knows what he knew? Anyway, Lang didn't have any maxillary
arch after Dolarhyde got through with him. He shot the head off Lang's body and
he must have tipped a chair or something for the thud of the body falling. He'd
hung the key around Lang's neck.
"Now Reba's scrambling
around looking for the key. Dolarhyde's in the corner watching. Her ears are
ringing from the shotgun. She won't hear his little noises.
"He's started a fire, but he
hasn't put the gas to it yet. He's got gas in the room. She got out of the
house okay. If she had panicked too much, run into a wall or something or
frozen, I guess he'd have sapped her and dragged her outside. She wouldn't have
known how she got out. But she had to get out for it to work. Oh hell, here
comes that nurse."
Graham wrote fast. "How
vehicle?"
"You have to admire
this," Crawford said. "He knew he'd have to leave his van at the
house. He couldn't drive two vehicles out there, and he needed a getaway piece.
"This is what he did: he
made Lang hook up the service-station tow truck to his van. He snuffed Lang,
locked the station, and towed his van out to his house. Then he left the tow
truck on a dirt road back in the fields behind the house, got back in his van
and went after Reba. When she got out of the house all right, he dragged out
his dynamite, put the gasoline around the fire, and lammed out the back. He
drove the tow truck back to the service station, left it and got Lang's car. No
loose ends.
"It drove me crazy until we
figured it out. I know it's right because he left a couple of prints on the tow
bar.
"We probably met him in the
road when we were going up there to the house . . . Yes, ma'am. I'm coming.
Yes, ma'am."
Graham wanted to ask a question,
but it was too late.
Molly took the next five-minute
visit.
Graham wrote "I love
you" on Crawford's pad.
She nodded and held his hand.
A minute later he wrote again.
"Willy okay?"
She nodded.
"Here?"
She looked up at him too quickly
from the pad. She made a kiss with her mouth and pointed to the approaching
nurse.
He tugged her thumb.
"Where?" he insisted,
underlining twice.
"Oregon," she said.
Crawford came a final time.
Graham was ready with his note.
It said, "Teeth?"
"His grandmother's,"
Crawford said. "The ones we found in the house were his grandmother's. St.
Louis PD located one Ned Vogt - Dolarhyde's mother was Vogt's stepmother. Vogt
saw Mrs. Dolarhyde when he was a kid, and he never forgot the teeth.
"That's what I was calling
you about when you ran into Dolarhyde. The Smithsonian had just called me. They
finally had gotten the teeth from the Missouri authorities, just to examine for
their own satisfaction. They noticed the upper part was made of vulcanite
instead of acrylic like they use now. Nobody's made vulcanite plates in
thirty-five years.
"Dolarhyde had a new acrylic
pair just like them made to fit him. The new ones were on his body. Smithsonian
looked at some features on them - the fluting, they said, and rugae. Chinese
manufacture. The old ones were Swiss.
"He had a key on him too,
for a locker in Miami. Big book in there. Kind of a diary - hell of a thing.
I'll have it when you want to see it.
"Look, sport, I have to go
back to Washington. I'll get back down here the weekend, if I can. You gonna be
okay?"
Graham drew a question mark, then
scratched it out and wrote "sure."
The nurse came after Crawford
left. She shot some Demerol into his intravenous line and the clock grew fuzzy.
He couldn't keep up with the second hand.
He wondered if Dernerol would
work on your feelings. He could hold Molly a while with his face. Until they
finished fixing it anyway. That would be a cheap shot. Hold her for what? He
was drifting off and he hoped he wouldn't dream.
He did drift between memory and
dream, but it wasn't so bad. He didn't dream of Molly leaving, or of Dolarhyde.
It was a long memory-dream of Shiloh, interrupted by lights shone in his face
and the gasp and hiss of the blood-pressure cuff . . .
It was spring, soon after he shot
Garrett Jacob Hobbs, when Graham visited Shiloh.
On a soft April day he walked
across the asphalt road to Bloody Pond. The new grass, still light green, grew
down the slope to the water. The clear water had risen into the grass and the
grass was visible in the water, growing down, down, as though it covered the
bottorn of the pond.
Graham knew what had happened
there in April 1862.
He sat down in the grass, felt
the damp ground through his trousers.
A tourist's automobile went by
and after it had passed, Graham saw movement behind it in the road. The car had
broken a chicken snake's back. It slid in endless figure eights across itself
in the center of the asphalt road, sometimes showing its black back, sometimes
its pale belly.
Shiloh's awesome presence hooded
him with cold, though he was sweating in the mild spring sun.
Graham got up off the grass, his
trousers damp behind. He was light-headed.
The snake looped on itself. He
stood over it, picked it up by the end of its smooth dry tail, and with a long
fluid motion cracked it like a whip.
Its brains zinged into the pond.
A bream rose to them.
He had thought Shiloh haunted,
its beauty sinister like flags.
Now, drifting between memory and
narcotic sleep, he saw that Shiloh was not sinister; it was indifferent.
Beautiful Shiloh could witness anything. Its unforgivable beauty simply
underscored the indifference of nature, the Green Machine. The loveliness of
Shiloh mocked our plight.
He roused and watched the mindless
clock, but he couldn't stop thinking.
In the Green Machine there is no
mercy; we make mercy, manufacture it in the parts that have overgrown our basic
reptile brain.
There is no murder. We make
murder, and it matters only to us.
Graham knew too well that he
contained all the elements to make murder; perhaps mercy too.
He understood murder
uncomfortably well, though.
He wondered if, in the great body
of humankind, in the minds of men set on civilization, the vicious urges we
control in ourselves and the dark instinctive knowledge of those urges function
like the crippled virus the body arms against.
He wondered if old, awful urges
are the virus that makes vaccine. Yes, he had been wrong about Shiloh. Shiloh
isn't haunted - men are haunted.
Shiloh doesn't care.
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly:
I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
-ECCLESIASTES