فصل 14

CHAPTER 14

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History had been closed for hours, but Crawford had called ahead and a guard waited to let Clarice Starling in the Constitution Avenue entrance.

The lights were dimmed in the closed museum and the air was still. Only the colossal figure of a South Seas chieftain facing the entrance stood tall enough for the weak ceiling light to shine on his face.

Starling’s guide was a big black man in the neat turnout of the Smithsonian guards. She thought he resembled the chieftain as he raised his face to the elevator lights. There was a moment’s relief in her idle fancy, like rubbing a cramp.

The second level above the great stuffed elephant, a vast floor closed to the public, is shared by the departments of Anthropology and Entomology. The anthropologists call it the fourth floor. The entomologists contend it is the third. A few scientists from Agriculture say they have proof that it is the sixth. Each faction has a case in the old building with its additions and subdivisions.

Starling followed the guard into a dim maze of corridors walled high with wooden cases of anthropological specimens. Only the small labels revealed their contents.

“Thousands of people in these boxes,” the guard said. “Forty thousand specimens.” He found office numbers with his flashlight and trailed the light over the labels as they went along.

Dyak baby carriers and ceremonial skulls gave way to Aphids, and they left Man for the older and more orderly world of Insects. Now the corridor was walled with big metal boxes painted pale green.

“Thirty million insects—and the spiders on top of that. Don’t lump the spiders in with the insects,” the guard advised. “Spider people jump all over you about that. There, the office that’s lit. Don’t try to come out by yourself. If they don’t say they’ll bring you down, call me at this extension, it’s the guard office. I’ll come get you.” He gave her a card and left her.

She was in the heart of Entomology, on a rotunda gallery high above the great stuffed elephant. There was the office with the lights on and the door open.

“Time, Pilch!” A man’s voice, shrill with excitement. “Let’s go here. Time!” Starling stopped in the doorway. Two men sat at a laboratory table playing chess. Both were about thirty, one black-haired and lean, the other pudgy with wiry red hair. They appeared to be engrossed in the chessboard. If they noticed Starling, they gave no sign. If they noticed the enormous rhinoceros beetle slowly making its way across the board, weaving among the chessmen, they gave no sign of that either.

Then the beetle crossed the edge of the board.

“Time, Roden,” the lean one said instantly.

The pudgy one moved his bishop and immediately turned the beetle around and started it trudging back the other way.

“If the beetle just cuts across the corner, is time up then?” Starling asked.

“Of course time’s up then,” the pudgy one said loudly, without looking up. “Of course it’s up then. How do you play? Do you make him cross the whole board? Who do you play against, a sloth?” “I have the specimen Special Agent Crawford called about.” “I can’t imagine why we didn’t hear your siren,” the pudgy one said. “We’re waiting all night here to identify a bug for the FBI. Bugs’re all we do. Nobody said anything about Special Agent Crawford’s specimen. He should show his specimen privately to his family doctor. Time, Pilch!” “I’d love to catch your whole routine another time,” Starling said, “but this is urgent, so let’s do it now. Time, Pilch.” The black-haired one looked around at her, saw her leaning against the doorframe with her briefcase. He put the beetle on some rotten wood in a box and covered it with a lettuce leaf.

When he got up, he was tall.

“I’m Noble Pilcher,” he said. “That’s Albert Roden. You need an insect identified? We’re happy to help you.” Pilcher had a long friendly face, but his black eyes were a little witchy and too close together, and one of them had a slight cast that made it catch the light independently. He did not offer to shake hands. “You are…?” “Clarice Starling.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Pilcher held the small jar to the light.

Roden came to look. “Where did you find it? Did you kill it with your gun? Did you see its mommy?” It occurred to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw.

“Shhh,” Pilcher said. “Tell us where you found it. Was it attached to anything—a twig or a leaf—or was it in the soil?” “I see,” Starling said. “Nobody’s talked to you.”

“The Chairman asked us to stay late and identify a bug for the FBI,” Pilcher said.

“Told us,” Roden said. “Told us to stay late.”

“We do it all the time for Customs and the Department of Agriculture,” Pilcher said.

“But not in the middle of the night,” Roden said.

“I need to tell you a couple of things involving a criminal case,” Starling said. “I’m allowed to do that if you’ll keep it in confidence until the case is resolved. It’s important. It means some lives, and I’m not just saying that. Dr. Roden, can you tell me seriously that you’ll respect a confidence?” “I’m not a doctor. Do I have to sign anything?”

“Not if your word’s any good. You’ll have to sign for the specimen if you need to keep it, that’s all.” “Of course I’ll help you. I’m not uncaring.”

“Dr. Pilcher?”

“That’s true,” Pilcher said. “He’s not uncaring.”

“Confidence?”

“I won’t tell.”

“Pilch isn’t a doctor yet either,” Roden said. “We’re on an equal educational footing. But notice how he allowed you to call him that.” Roden placed the tip of his forefinger against his chin, as though pointing to his judicious expression. “Give us all the details. What might seem irrelevant to you could be vital information to an expert.” “This insect was found lodged behind the soft palate of a murder victim. I don’t know how it got there. Her body was in the Elk River in West Virginia, and she hadn’t been dead more than a few days.” “It’s Buffalo Bill, I heard it on the radio,” Roden said.

“You didn’t hear about the insect on the radio, did you?” Starling said.

“No, but they said Elk River—are you coming in from that today, is that why you’re so late?” “Yes,” Starling said.

“You must be tired, do you want some coffee?” Roden said.

“No, thank you.”

“Water?”

“No.”

“A Coke?”

“I don’t believe so. We want to know where this woman was held captive and where she was killed. We’re hoping this bug has some specialized habitat, or it’s limited in range, you know, or it only sleeps on some kind of tree—we want to know where this insect is from. I’m asking for your confidence because—if the perpetrator put the insect there deliberately—then only he would know that fact and we could use it to eliminate false confessions and save time. He’s killed six at least. Time’s eating us up.” “Do you think he’s holding another woman right this minute, while we’re looking at his bug?” Roden asked in her face. His eyes were wide and his mouth open. She could see into his mouth, and she flashed for a second on something else.

“I don’t know.” A little shrill, that. “I don’t know,” she said again, to take the edge off it. “He’ll do it again as soon as he can.” “So we’ll do this as soon as we can,” Pilcher said. “Don’t worry, we’re good at this. You couldn’t be in better hands.” He removed the brown object from the jar with a slender forceps and placed it on a sheet of white paper beneath the light. He swung a magnifying glass on a flexible arm over it.

The insect was long and it looked like a mummy. It was sheathed in a semitransparent cover that followed its general outlines like a sarcophagus. The appendages were bound so tightly against the body, they might have been carved in low relief. The little face looked wise.

“In the first place, it’s not anything that would normally infest a body outdoors, and it wouldn’t be in the water except by accident,” Pilcher said. “I don’t know how familiar you are with insects or how much you want to hear.” “Let’s say I don’t know diddly. I want you to tell me the whole thing.” “Okay, this is a pupa, an immature insect, in a chrysalis—that’s the cocoon that holds it while it transforms itself from a larva into an adult,” Pilcher said.

“Obtect pupa, Pilch?” Roden wrinkled his nose to hold his glasses up.

“Yeah, I think so. You want to pull down Chu on the immature insects? Okay, this is the pupal stage of a large insect. Most of the more advanced insects have a pupal stage. A lot of them spend the winter this way.” “Book or look, Pilch?” Roden said.

“I’ll look.” Pilcher moved the specimen to the stage of a microscope and hunched over it with a dental probe in his hand. “Here we go: No distinct respiratory organs on the dorsocephalic region, spiracles on the mesothorax and some abdominals, let’s start with that.” “Ummhumm,” Roden said, turning pages in a small manual. “Functional mandibles?” “Nope.”

“Paired galeae of maxillae on the ventro meson?”

“Yep, yep.”

“Where are the antennae?”

“Adjacent to the mesal margin of the wings. Two pairs of wings, the inside pair are completely covered up. Only the bottom three abdominal segments are free. Little pointy cremaster—I’d say Lepidoptera.” “That’s what it says here,” Roden said.

“It’s the family that includes the butterflies and moths. Covers a lot of territory,” Pilcher said.

“It’s gonna be tough if the wings are soaked. I’ll pull the references,” Roden said. “I guess there’s no way I can keep you from talking about me while I’m gone.” “I guess not,” Pilcher said. “Roden’s all right,” he told Starling as soon as Roden left the room.

“I’m sure he is.”

“Are you now.” Pilcher seemed amused. “We were undergraduates together, working and glomming any kind of fellowship we could. He got one where he had to sit down in a coal mine waiting for proton decay. He just stayed in the dark too long. He’s all right. Just don’t mention proton decay.” “I’ll try to talk around it.”

Pilcher turned away from the bright light. “It’s a big family, Lepidoptera. Maybe thirty thousand butterflies and a hundred thirty thousand moths. I’d like to take it out of the chrysalis—I’ll have to if we’re going to narrow it down.” “Okay. Can you do it in one piece?”

“I think so. See, this one had started out on its own power before it died. It had started an irregular fracture in the chrysalis right here. This may take a little while.” Pilcher spread the natural split in the case and eased the insect out. The bunched wings were soaked. Spreading them was like working with a wet, wadded facial tissue. No pattern was visible.

Roden was back with the books.

“Ready?” Pilcher said. “Okay, the prothoracic femur is concealed.” “What about pilifers?”

“No pilifers,” Pilcher said. “Would you turn out the light, Officer Starling?” She waited by the wall switch until Pilcher’s penlight came on. He stood back from the table and shined it on the specimen. The insect’s eyes glowed in the dark, reflecting the narrow beam.

“Owlet,” Roden said.

“Probably, but which one?” Pilcher said. “Give us the lights, please. It’s a Noctuid, Officer Starling—a night moth. How many Noctuids are there, Roden?” “Twenty-six hundred and … about twenty-six hundred have been described.” “Not many this big, though. Okay, let’s see you shine, my man.” Roden’s wiry red head covered the microscope.

“We have to go to chaetaxy now—studying the skin of the insect to narrow it down to one species,” Pilcher said. “Roden’s the best at it.” Starling had the sense that a kindness had passed in the room.

Roden responded by starting a fierce argument with Pilcher over whether the specimen’s larval warts were arranged in circles or not. It raged on through the arrangement of the hairs on the abdomen.

“Erebus odora,” Roden said at last.

“Let’s go look,” Pilcher said.

They took the specimen with them, down in the elevator to the level just above the great stuffed elephant and back into an enormous quad filled with pale green boxes. What was formerly a great hall had been split into two levels with decks to provide more storage for the Smithsonian’s insects. They were in Neotropical now, moving into Noctuids. Pilcher consulted his notepad and stopped at a box chest-high in the great wall stack.

“You have to be careful with these things,” he said, sliding the heavy metal door off the box and setting it on the floor. “You drop one on your foot and you hop for weeks.” He ran his finger down the stacked drawers, selected one, and pulled it out.

In the tray Starling saw the tiny preserved eggs, the caterpillar in a tube of alcohol, a cocoon peeled away from a specimen very similar to hers, and the adult—a big brown-black moth with a wingspan of nearly six inches, a furry body, and slender antennae.

“Erebus odor,” Pilcher said. “The Black Witch Moth.”

Roden was already turning pages. “’A tropical species sometimes straying up to Canada in the fall,’” he read. “’The larvae eat acacia, catclaw, and similar plants. Indigenous West Indies, Southern U.S., considered a pest in Hawaii.’” Fuckola, Starling thought. “Nuts,” she said aloud. “They’re all over.” “But they’re not all over all the time.” Pilcher’s head was down. He pulled at his chin. “Do they double-brood, Roden?” “Wait a second … yeah, in extreme south Florida and south Texas.” “When?”

“May and August.”

“I was just thinking,” Pilcher said. “Your specimen’s a little better developed than the one we have, and it’s fresh. It had started fracturing its cocoon to come out. In the West Indies or Hawaii, maybe, I could understand it, but it’s winter here. In this country it would wait three months to come out. Unless it happened accidentally in a greenhouse, or somebody raised it.” “Raised it how?”

“In a cage, in a warm place, with some acacia leaves for the larvae to eat until they’re ready to button up in their cocoons. It’s not hard to do.” “Is it a popular hobby? Outside professional study, do a lot of people do it?” “No, primarily it’s entomologists trying to get a perfect specimen, maybe a few collectors. There’s the silk industry too, they raise moths, but not this kind.” “Entomologists must have periodicals, professional journals, people that sell equipment,” Starling said.

“Sure, and most of the publications come here.”

“Let me make you a bundle,” Roden said. “A couple of people here subscribe privately to the smaller newsletters—keep ‘em locked up and make you give them a quarter just to look at the stupid things. I’ll have to get those in the morning.” “I’ll see they’re picked up, thank you, Mr. Roden.”

Pilcher photocopied the references on Erebus odora and gave them to her, along with the insect. “I’ll take you down,” he said.

They waited for the elevator. “Most people love butterflies and hate moths,” he said. “But moths are more—interesting, engaging.” “They’re destructive.”

“Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do.” Silence for one floor. “There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.” “What kind of tears? Whose tears?”

“The tears of large land mammals, about our size. The old definition of moth was ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.’ It was a verb for destruction too.… Is this what you do all the time—hunt Buffalo Bill?” “I do it all I can.”

Pilcher polished his teeth, his tongue moving behind his lips like a cat beneath the covers. “Do you ever go out for cheeseburgers and beer or the amusing house wine?” “Not lately.”

“Will you go for some with me now? It’s not far.”

“No, but I’ll treat when this is over—and Mr. Roden can go too, naturally.” “There’s nothing natural about that,” Pilcher said. And at the door, “I hope you’re through with this soon, Officer Starling.” She hurried to the waiting car.

Ardelia Mapp had left Starling’s mail and half a Mounds candy bar on her bed. Mapp was asleep.

Starling carried her portable typewriter down to the laundry room, put it on the clothes-folding shelf and cranked in a carbon set. She had organized her notes on Erebus odora in her head on the ride back to Quantico, and she covered that quickly.

Then she ate the Mounds and wrote a memo to Crawford suggesting they cross-check the entomology publications’ computerized mailing lists against the FBI’s known offender files and the files in the cities closest to the abductions, plus felon and sex-offender files of Metro Dade, San Antonio, and Houston, the areas where the moths were most plentiful.

There was another thing, too, that she had to bring up for a second time: Let’s ask Dr. Lecter why he thought the perpetrator would start taking scalps.

She delivered the paper to the night duty officer and fell into her grateful bed, the voices of the day still whispering, softer than Mapp’s breathing across the room. On the swarming dark she saw the moth’s wise little face. Those glowing eyes had looked at Buffalo Bill.

Out of the cosmic hangover the Smithsonian leaves came her last thought and a coda for her day: Over this odd world, this half the world that’s dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.