فصل چهاردهم

CHAPTER 14

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. Gra?ham looked tired and he was impatient with the signingin. Craw?ford 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 Sim?mons - 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 ballpoint, 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 traceandtape 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 Alka?Seltzer. “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,” Gra?ham 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 fed?eral 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 circum?stances 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 Mon?day 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 al?ways 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 MahJongg. 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 fourfifteen,” 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 ev?erybody? . . . 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. Sixsixsix. 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 recom?mend 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 tex?ture 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 righthanded person using his left hand and printing in a deliberate block pattern. You can see the unsteadiness in the strokes and vary?ing letter sizes.

“The proportions make me think our man has a touch of uncor?rected astigmatism.

“The inks on both pieces of the note look like the same standard ballpoint 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 pointdown 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 ad?visory.” Bowman flipped to a photograph of the back of the note. The ex?treme 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 highcontrast 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 lettersize envelope. These two dark places are printingink 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 chil?dren 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, wellworn 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 hitormiss, 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 Gra?ham 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 fireextinguisherservice 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 mis?take 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 rounda?bout 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 closerange section of his bi?focals. “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, some?thing 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 refer?ences 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 twentytwo 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 cryp?tography 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 sec?tion forgave him for not being an exMarine 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 connec?tion. 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,” Bow?man 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 numberletter 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 plainlanguage 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 bet?ter 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.