فصل 48

CHAPTER 48

Crawford came out of the funeral home and looked up and down the street for Jeff with the car. Instead he saw Clarice Starling waiting under the awning, dressed in a dark suit, looking real in the light.

“Send me,” she said.

Crawford had just picked out his wife’s coffin and he carried in a paper sack a pair of her shoes he had mistakenly brought. He collected himself.

“Forgive me,” Starling said. “I wouldn’t come now if there were any other time. Send me.” Crawford jammed his hands in his pockets, turned his neck in his collar until it popped. His eyes were bright, maybe dangerous. “Send you where?” “You sent me to get a feel for Catherine Martin—let me go to the others. All we’ve got left is to find out how he hunts. How he finds them, how he picks them. I’m as good as anybody you’ve got at the cop stuff, better at some things. The victims are all women and there aren’t any women working this. I can walk in a woman’s room and know three times as much about her as a man would know, and you know that’s a fact. Send me.” “You ready to accept a recycle?”

“Yes.”

“Six months of your life, probably.”

She didn’t say anything.

Crawford stubbed at the grass with his toe. He looked up at her, at the prairie distance in her eyes. She had backbone, like Bella. “Who would you start with?” “The first one. Fredrica Bimmel, Belvedere, Ohio.” “Not Kimberly Emberg, the one you saw.”

“He didn’t start with her.” Mention Lecter? No. He’d see it on the hotline.

“Emberg would be the emotional choice, wouldn’t she, Starling? Travel’s by reimbursement. Got any money?” The banks wouldn’t open for an hour.

“I’ve got some left on my Visa.”

Crawford dug in his pockets. He gave her three hundred dollars cash and a personal check.

“Go, Starling. Just to the first one. Post the hotline. Call me.” She raised her hand to him. She didn’t touch his face or his hand, there didn’t seem to be any place to touch, and she turned and ran for the Pinto.

Crawford patted his pockets as she drove away. He had given her the last cent he had with him.

“Baby needs a new pair of shoes,” he said. “My baby doesn’t need any shoes.” He was crying in the middle of the sidewalk, sheets of tears on his face, a Section Chief of the FBI, silly now.

Jeff from the car saw his cheeks shine and backed into an alley where Crawford couldn’t see him. Jeff got out of the car. He lit a cigarette and smoked furiously. As his gift to Crawford he would dawdle until Crawford was dried off and pissed off and justified in chewing him out.