فصل 4

CHAPTER 4

Clarice Starling was excited, depleted, running on her will. Some of the things Lecter had said about her were true, and some only clanged on the truth. For a few seconds she had felt an alien consciousness loose in her head, slapping things off the shelves like a bear in a camper.

She hated what he’d said about her mother and she had to get rid of the anger. This was business.

She sat in her old Pinto across the street from the hospital and breathed deeply. When the windows fogged she had a little privacy from the sidewalk.

Raspail. She remembered the name. He was a patient of Lecter’s and one of his victims. She’d had only one evening with the Lecter background material. The file was vast and Raspail one of many victims. She needed to read the details.

Starling wanted to run with it, but she knew that the urgency was of her own manufacture. The Raspail case was closed years ago. No one was in danger. She had time. Better to be well informed and well advised before she went further.

Crawford might take it away from her and give it to someone else. She’d have to take that chance.

She tried to call him from a phone booth, but found he was budget-begging for the Justice Department before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations.

She could have gotten details of the case from the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide division, but murder is not a federal crime and she knew they’d snatch it away from her immediately, no question.

She drove back to Quantico, back to Behavioral Science with its homey brown-checked curtains and its gray files full of hell. She sat there into the evening, after the last secretary had left, cranking through the Lecter microfilm. The contrary old viewer glowed like a jack-o’-lantern in the darkened room, the words and the negatives of pictures swarming across her intent face.

Raspail, Benjamin René, WM, 46, was first flutist for the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra. He was a patient in Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatric practice.

On March 22, 1975, he failed to appear for a performance in Baltimore. On March 25 his body was discovered seated in a pew in a small rural church near Falls Church, Virginia, dressed only in a white tie and a tailcoat. Autopsy revealed that Raspail’s heart was pierced and that he was short his thymus and pancreas.

Clarice Starling, who from early life had known much more than she wished to know about meat processing, recognized the missing organs as the sweetbreads.

Baltimore Homicide believed that these items appeared on the menu of a dinner Lecter gave for the president and the conductor of the Baltimore Philharmonic on the evening following Raspail’s disappearance.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter professed to know nothing about these matters. The president and the conductor of the Philharmonic testified that they could not recall the fare at Dr. Lecter’s dinner, though Lecter was known for the excellence of his table and had contributed numerous articles to gourmet magazines.

The president of the Philharmonic subsequently was treated for anorexia and problems related to alcohol dependency at a holistic nerve sanitarium in Basel.

Raspail was Lecter’s ninth known victim, according to the Baltimore police.

Raspail died intestate, and the lawsuits among his relatives over the estate were followed by the newspapers for a number of months before public interest flagged.

Raspail’s relatives had also joined with the families of other victims in Lecter’s practice in a successful lawsuit to have the errant psychiatrist’s case files and tapes destroyed. There was no telling what embarrassing secrets he might blab, their reasoning went, and the files were documentation.

The court had appointed Raspail’s lawyer, Everett Yow, to be executor of his estate.

Starling would have to apply to the lawyer to get at the car. The lawyer might be protective of Raspail’s memory and, with enough advance notice, might destroy evidence to cover for his late client.

Starling preferred to pounce, and she needed advice and authorization. She was alone in Behavioral Science and had the run of the place. She found Crawford’s home number in the Rolodex.

She never heard the telephone ringing, but suddenly his voice was there, very quiet and even.

“Jack Crawford.”

“This is Clarice Starling. I hope you weren’t eating dinner.…” She had to continue into silence. “… Lecter told me something about the Raspail case today, I’m in the office following it up. He tells me there’s something in Raspail’s car. I’d have to get at it through his lawyer, and since tomorrow’s Saturday—no school—I wanted to ask you if—” “Starling, do you have any recollection of what I told you to do with the Lecter information?” Crawford’s voice was so terribly quiet.

“Give you a report by 0900 Sunday.”

“Do that, Starling. Do just exactly that.”

“Yes sir.”

The dial tone stung in her ear. The sting spread over her face and made her eyes burn.

“Well God fucking shit,” she said. “You old creep. Creepo son of a bitch. Let Miggs squirt you and see how you like it.” * * *

Starling, scrubbed shiny and wearing her FBI Academy nightgown, was working on the second draft of her report when her dormitory roommate, Ardelia Mapp, came in from the library. Mapp’s broad, brown, eminently sane countenance was one of the more welcome sights of her day.

Ardelia Mapp saw the fatigue in her face.

“What did you do today, girl?” Mapp always asked questions as if the answers could make no possible difference.

“Wheedled a crazy man with come all over me.”

“I wish I had time for a social life—I don’t know how you manage it, and school too.” Starling found that she was laughing. Ardelia Mapp laughed with her, as much as the small joke was worth. Starling did not stop, and she heard herself from far away, laughing and laughing. Through Starling’s tears, Mapp looked strangely old and her smile had sadness in it.