فصل 3

Chapter 3

WITH THE gray dawn came the newspapers and the early network news.

Mapp came over with some muffins when she heard Starling stirring around and they watched together.

CNN and the other networks all bought the copyrighted film from WFUL-TV’s helicopter camera. It was extraordinary footage from directly overhead.

Starling watched once. She had to see that Evelda; shot first. She looked at Mapp and saw anger in her brown face.

Then Starling ran to throw up.

“That’s hard to watch,” Starling said when she came back, shaky-legged and pale.

As usual, Mapp got to the point at once. “Your question is, how do I feel about you killing that African American woman holding that child. This is the answer. She shot you first. I want you to be alive. But Starling, think about who’s making this insane policy here. What kind of dumb-ass thinking put you and Evelda Drumgo together in that sorry place so you could solve the drug problem between you with some damn guns? How smart is that? I hope you’ll think about whether you want to be their cat’s paw anymore.” Mapp poured some tea for punctuation. “You want me to stay with you? I’ll take a personal day.”

“Thanks. You don’t need to do that. Call me.”

The National Tattler, prime beneficiary of the tabloid boom in the nineties, put out an extra that was extraordinary even by its own standards. Someone threw it at the house at midmorning. Starling found it when she went to investigate the thump. She was expecting the worst, and she got it: “DEATH ANGEL: CLARICE STARLING, THE FBI’s KILLING MACHINE,” screamed the National Tattler’s headline in seventy-two-point Railroad Gothic. The three front-page photos were: Clarice Starling in fatigues firing a .45-caliber pistol in competition, Evelda Drumgo bent over her baby in the road, her head tilted like that of a Cimabue Madonna, with the brains blown out, and Starling again, putting a brown naked baby on a white cutting board amid knives and fish guts and the head of a shark.

The caption beneath the pictures says, “FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling, slayer of serial killer Jame Gumb, adds at least five notches to her gun. Mother with babe in arms and two police officers among the dead after botched drug raid.”

The main story covered the drug careers of Evelda and Dijon Drumgo, and the appearance of the Crip gang on the war-torn landscape of Washington, D.C. There was a brief mention of fallen officer John Brigham’s military service, and his decorations were cited.

Starling was treated to an entire sidebar, beneath a candid photo of Starling in a restaurant wearing a scoop-necked dress, her face animated.

Clarice Starling, FBI Special Agent, had her fifteen minutes of fame when she shot to death serial murderer Jame Gumb, the “Buffalo Bill” killer, in his basement seven years ago. Now she may face departmental charges and civil liabilities in the death Thursday of a Washington mother accused of manufacturing illegal amphetamines.

(See main story Page 1.) “This may be the end of her career,” said one source at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI’s sister agency. “We don’t know all the details of how it went down, but John Brigham should be alive today. This is the last thing the FBI needs after Ruby Ridge,” said the source, who declined to be identified.

Clarice Starling’s colorful career began soon after she arrived at the FBI Academy as a trainee. An honor graduate of the University of Virginia in psychology and criminology, she was assigned to interview the lethal madman Dr Hannibal Lecter, dubbed by this newspaper “Hannibal the Cannibal,” and received information from him that was important in the search for Jame Gumb and the rescue of his hostage, Catherine Martin daughter of the former U.S. senator from Tennessee.

Agent Starling was the inter-service combat pistol champion for three years running before she withdrew from competition. Ironically, Officer Brigham, who died at her side, was firearms instructor at Quantico when Starling trained there and was her coach in competition.

An FBI spokesman said Agent Starling will be relieved of field duties with pay pending the outcome of the FBI’s internal investigation. A hearing is expected later this week before the Office of Professional Responsibility, the FBI’s own dread inquisition.

Relatives of the late Evelda Drumgo said they will seek civil damages from the U.S. government and from Starling personally in wrongful-death suits.

Drumgo’s three-month-old son, seen in his mother’s arms in the dramatic pictures of the shoot-out, was not injured.

Attorney Telford Higgins, who has defended the Drumgo family in numerous criminal proceedings, alleged that Special Agent Starling’s weapon, a modified Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol, was not approved for use in law enforcement in the city of Washington. “It is a deadly and dangerous instrument not suitable for use in law enforcement,” Higgins said. “Its very use constitutes reckless endangerment of human life,” the noted defense attorney said.

The Tattler had bought Clarice Starling’s very home phone number from one of her informants and rang it until Starling left it off the hook, and used her FBI cell phone to talk to the office.

Starling did not have a great deal of pain in her ear and the swollen side of her face as long as she did not touch the bandage. At least she didn’t throb. Two Tylenol held her. She didn’t need the Percocet the doctor had prescribed. She dozed against the headboard of the bed, the Washington Post sliding off the spread onto the floor, gunpowder residue in her hands, dried tears stiff on her cheeks.