فصل 18

CHAPTER 18

The guard took Clarice Starling to the second level above the Smithsonian’s great stuffed elephant. The elevator door opened onto that vast dim floor and Crawford was waiting there alone, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat.

“Evening, Starling.”

“Hello,” she said.

Crawford spoke over her shoulder to the guard. “We can make it from here by ourselves, Officer, thank you.” Crawford and Starling walked side by side along a corridor in the stacked trays and cases of anthropological specimens. A few ceiling lights were on, not many. As she fell with him into the hunched, reflective attitude of a campus stroll, Starling became aware that Crawford wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, that he would have done it if it were possible for him to touch her.

She waited for him to say something. Finally she stopped, put her hands in her pockets too, and they faced each other across the passage in the silence of the bones.

Crawford leaned his head back against the cases and took a deep breath through his nose. “Catherine Martin’s probably still alive,” he said.

Starling nodded, kept her head down after the last nod. Maybe he would find it easier to talk if she didn’t look at him. He was steady, but something had hold of him. Starling wondered for a second if his wife had died. Or maybe spending all day with Catherine’s grieving mother had done it.

“Memphis was pretty much of a wipe,” he said. “He got her on the parking lot, I think. Nobody saw it. She went in her apartment and then she came back out for some reason. She didn’t mean to stay out long—she left the door ajar and flipped the deadbolt so it wouldn’t lock behind her. Her keys were on top of the TV. Nothing disturbed inside. I don’t think she was in the apartment long. She never got as far as her answering machine in the bedroom. The message light was still blinking when her yo-yo boyfriend finally called the police.” Crawford idly let his hand fall into a tray of bones, and quickly took it out again.

“So now he’s got her, Starling. The networks agreed not to do a countdown on the evening news—Dr. Bloom thinks it eggs him on. A couple of the tabloids’ll do it anyway.” In one previous abduction, clothing slit up the back had been found soon enough to identify a Buffalo Bill victim while she was still being held alive. Starling remembered the black-bordered countdown on the front pages of the trash papers. It reached eighteen days before the body floated.

“So Catherine Baker Martin’s waiting in Bill’s green room, Starling, and we have maybe a week. That’s at the outside—Bloom thinks his period’s getting shorter.” This seemed like a lot of talk for Crawford. The theatrical “green room” reference smacked of bullshit. Starling waited for him to get to the point, and then he did.

“But this time, Starling, this time we may have a little break.” She looked up at him beneath her brows, hopeful and watchful too.

“We’ve got another insect. Your fellows, Pilcher and that … other one.” “Roden.”

“They’re working on it.”

“Where was it—Cincinnati?—the girl in the freezer?”

“No. Come on and I’ll show you. Let’s see what you think about it.” “Entomology’s the other way, Mr. Crawford.”

“I know,” he said.

They rounded the corner to the door of Anthropology. Light and voices came through the frosted glass. She went in.

Three men in laboratory coats worked at a table in the center of the room beneath a brilliant light. Starling couldn’t see what they were doing. Jerry Burroughs from Behavioral Science was looking over their shoulders taking notes on a clipboard. There was a familiar odor in the room.

Then one of the men in white moved to put something in the sink and she could see all right.

In a stainless-steel tray on the workbench was “Klaus,” the head she had found in the Split City Mini-Storage.

“Klaus had the bug in his throat,” Crawford said. “Hold on a minute, Starling. Jerry, are you talking to the wire room?” Burroughs was reading from his clipboard into the telephone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Yeah, Jack, they’re drying the art on Klaus.” Crawford took the receiver from him. “Bobby, don’t wait for the Interpol split. Get a picture wire and transmit the photographs now, along with the medical. Scandinavian countries, West Germany, the Netherlands. Be sure to say Klaus could be a merchant sailor that jumped ship. Mention that their National Health may have a claim for the cheekbone fracture. Call it the what, the zygomatic arch. Make sure you move both dental charts, the universal and the Federation Dentaire. They’re coming with an age, but emphasize that it’s a rough estimate—you can’t depend on skull sutures for that.” He gave the phone back to Burroughs. “Where’s your gear, Starling?” “The guard office downstairs.”

“Johns Hopkins found the insect,” Crawford said as they waited for the elevator. “They were doing the head for the Baltimore County police. It was in the throat, just like the girl in West Virginia.” “Just like West Virginia.”

“You clucked. Johns Hopkins found it about seven tonight. The Baltimore district attorney called me on the plane. They sent the whole thing over, Klaus and all, so we could see it in situ. They also wanted an opinion from Dr. Angel on Klaus’ age and how old he was when he fractured his cheekbone. They consult the Smithsonian just like we do.” “I have to deal with this a second. You’re saying maybe Buffalo Bill killed Klaus? Years ago?” “Does it seem farfetched, too much of a coincidence?”

“Right this second it does.”

“Let it cook a minute.”

“Dr. Lecter told me where to find Klaus,” Starling said.

“Yes, he did.”

“Dr. Lecter told me his patient, Benjamin Raspail, claimed to have killed Klaus. But Lecter said he believed it was probably accidental erotic asphyxia.” “That’s what he said.”

“You think maybe Dr. Lecter knows exactly how Klaus died, and it wasn’t Raspail, and it wasn’t erotic asphyxia?” “Klaus had a bug in his throat, the girl in West Virginia had a bug in her throat. I never saw that anywhere else. Never read about it, never heard of it. What do you think?” “I think you told me to pack for two days. You want me to ask Dr. Lecter, don’t you.” “You’re the one he talks to, Starling.” Crawford looked so sad when he said, “I figure you’re game.” She nodded.

“We’ll talk on the way to the asylum,” he said.