فصل 52

CHAPTER 52

Fredrica Bimmel’s house was three stories tall and gaunt, covered with asphalt shingles stained rusty where the gutters had spilled over. Volunteer maples growing in the gutters had stood up to the winter pretty well. The windows on the north side were covered with sheet plastic.

In a small parlor, very warm from a space heater, a middle-aged woman sat on a rug, playing with an infant.

“My wife,” Bimmel said as they passed through the room. “We just got married Christmas.” “Hello,” Starling said. The woman smiled vaguely in her direction.

Cold in the hall again and everywhere boxes stacked waist-high filling the rooms, passageways among them, cardboard cartons filled with lampshades and canning lids, picnic hampers, back numbers of the Reader’s Digest and National Geographic, thick old tennis rackets, bed linens, a case of dartboards, fiber car-seat covers in a fifties plaid with the intense smell of mouse pee.

“We’re moving pretty soon,” Mr. Bimmel said.

The stuff near the windows was bleached by the sun, the boxes stacked for years and bellied with age, the random rugs worn bare in the paths through the rooms.

Sunlight dappled the bannister as Starling climbed the stairs behind Fredrica’s father. His clothes smelled stale in the cold air. She could see sunlight coming through the sagging ceiling at the top of the stairwell. The cartons stacked on the landing were covered with plastic.

Fredrica’s room was small, under the eaves on the third floor.

“You want me anymore?”

“Later, I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Bimmel. What about Fredrica’s mother?” The file said “deceased,” it didn’t say when.

“What do you mean, what about her? She died when Fredrica was twelve.”

“I see.”

“Did you think that was Fredrica’s mother downstairs? After I told you we just been married since Christmas? That what you thought is it? I guess the law’s used to handling a different class of people, missy. She never knew Fredrica at all.” “Mr. Bimmel, is the room pretty much like Fredrica left it?”

The anger wandered somewhere else in him.

“Yah,” he said softly. “We just left it alone. Nobody much could wear her stuff. Plug in the heater if you want it. Remember and unplug it before you come down.” He didn’t want to see the room. He left her on the landing.

Starling stood for a moment with her hand on the cold porcelain knob. She needed to organize a little, before her head was full of Fredrica’s things.

Okay, the premise is Buffalo Bill did Fredrica first, weighted her and hid her well, in a river far from home. He hid her better than the others—she was the only one weighted—because he wanted the later ones found first. He wanted the idea of random selection of victims in widely scattered towns well established before Fredrica, of Belvedere, was found. It was important to take attention away from Belvedere. Because he lives here, or maybe in Columbus.

He started with Fredrica because he coveted her hide. We don’t begin to covet with imagined things. Coveting is a very literal sin—we begin to covet with tangibles, we begin with what we see every day. He saw Fredrica in the course of his daily life. He saw her in the course of her daily life.

What was the course of Fredrica’s daily life? All right …

Starling pushed the door open. Here it was, this still room smelling of mildew in the cold. On the wall, last year’s calendar was forever turned to April. Fredrica had been dead ten months.

Cat food, hard and black, was in a saucer in the corner.

Starling, veteran yard-sale decorator, stood in the center of the room and turned slowly around. Fredrica had done a pretty good job with what she had. There were curtains of flowered chintz. Judging from the piped edges, she had recycled some slipcovers to make the curtains.

There was a bulletin board with a sash pinned to it. BHS BAND was printed on the sash in glitter. A poster of the performer Madonna was on the wall, and another of Deborah Harry and Blondie. On a shelf above the desk, Starling could see a roll of the bright self-adhesive wallpaper Fredrica had used to cover her walls. It was not a great job of papering, but better than her own first effort, Starling thought.

In an average home, Frederica’s room would have been cheerful. In this bleak house it was shrill; there was an echo of desperation in it.

Fredrica did not display photographs of herself in the room.

Starling found one in the school yearbook on the small bookcase. Glee Club, Home-Ec Club, Sew n’ Sew, Band, 4-H Club—maybe the pigeons served as her 4-H project.

Fredrica’s school annual had some signatures. “To a great pal,” and a “great gal” and “my chemistry buddy,” and “Remember the bake sale?!!” Could Fredrica bring her friends up here? Did she have a friend good enough to bring up those stairs beneath the drip? There was an umbrella beside the door.

Look at this picture of Fredrica, here she’s in the front row of the band. Fredrica is wide and fat, but her uniform fits better than the others. She’s big and she has beautiful skin. Her irregular features combine to make a pleasant face, but she is not attractive looking by conventional standards.

Kimberly Emberg wasn’t what you would call fetching either, not to the mindless gape of high school, and neither were a couple of the others.

Catherine Martin, though, would be attractive to anybody, a big, good-looking young woman who would have to fight the fat when she was thirty.

Remember, he doesn’t look at women as a man looks at them. Conventionally attractive doesn’t count. They just have to be smooth and roomy.

Starling wondered if he thought of women as “skins,” the way some cretins call them “cunts.” She became aware of her own hand tracing the line of credits beneath the yearbook picture, became aware of her entire body, the space she filled, her figure and her face, their effect, the power in them, her breasts above the book, her hard belly against it, her legs below it. What of her experience applied?

Starling saw herself in the full-length mirror on the end wall and was glad to be different from Fredrica. But she knew the difference was a matrix in her thinking. What might it keep her from seeing?

How did Fredrica want to appear? What was she hungry for, where did she seek it? What did she try to do about herself?

Here were a couple of diet plans, the Fruit Juice Diet, the Rice Diet, and a crackpot plan where you don’t eat and drink at the same sitting.

Organized diet groups—did Buffalo Bill watch them to find big girls? Hard to check. Starling knew from the file that two of the victims had belonged to diet groups and that the membership rosters had been compared. An agent from the Kansas City office, the FBI’s traditional Fat Boys’ Bureau, and some overweight police were sent around to work out at Slenderella, and Diet Center, and join Weight Watchers and other diet denominations in the victim’s towns. She didn’t know if Catherine Martin belonged to a diet group. Money would have been a problem for Fredrica in organized dieting.

Fredrica had several issues of Big Beautiful Girl, a magazine for large women. Here she was advised to “come to New York City, where you can meet newcomers from parts of the world where your size is considered a prized asset.” Right. Alternatively, “you could travel to Italy or Germany, where you won’t be alone after the first day.” You bet. Here’s what to do if your toes hang out over the ends of your shoes. Jesus! All Fredrica needed was to meet Buffalo Bill, who considered her size a “prized asset.” How did Fredrica manage? She had some makeup, a lot of skin stuff. Good for you, use that asset. Starling found herself rooting for Fredrica as though it mattered anymore.

She had some junk jewelry in a White Owl cigar box. Here was a gold-filled circle pin that most likely had belonged to her late mother. She’d tried to cut the fingers off some old gloves of machine lace, to wear them Madonna-style, but they’d raveled on her.

She had some music, a single-shot Decca record player from the fifties with a jackknife attached to the tone arm with rubber bands for weight. Yard-sale records. Love themes by Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute.

When she pulled the string to light the closet, Starling was surprised at Fredrica’s wardrobe. She had nice clothes, not a great many, but plenty for school, enough to get along in a fairly formal office or even a dressy retail job. A quick look inside them, and Starling saw the reason. Fredrica made her own, and made them well, the seams were bound with a serger, the facings carefully fitted. Stacks of patterns were on a shelf at the back of the closet. Most of them were Simplicity, but there were a couple of Vogues that looked hard.

She probably wore her best thing to the job interview. What had she worn? Starling flipped through her file. Here: last seen wearing a green outfit. Come on, officer, what the hell is a “green outfit?” Fredrica suffered from the Achilles’ heel of the budget wardrobe—she was short on shoes—and at her weight she was hard on the shoes she had. Her loafers were strained into ovals. She wore Odor-Eaters in her sandals. The eyelets were stretched in her running shoes.

Maybe Fredrica exercised a little—she had some outsized warmups.

They were made by Juno.

Catherine Martin also had some fat pants made by Juno.

Starling backed out of the closet. She sat on the foot of the bed with her arms folded and stared into the lighted closet.

Juno was a common brand, sold in a lot of places that handle outsizes, but it raised the question of clothing. Every town of any size has at least one store specializing in clothes for fat people.

Did Buffalo Bill watch fat stores, select a customer and follow her?

Did he go into oversize shops in drag and look around? Every oversize shop in a city gets both transvestites and drag queens as customers.

The idea of Buffalo Bill trying to cross over sexually had just been applied to the investigation very recently, since Dr. Lecter gave Starling his theory. What about his clothes?

All of the victims must have shopped in fat stores—Catherine Martin would wear a twelve, but the others couldn’t, and Catherine must have shopped in an oversize store to buy the big Juno sweats.

Catherine Martin could wear a twelve. She was the smallest of the victims. Fredrica, the first victim, was largest. How was Buffalo Bill managing to down-size with the choice of Catherine Martin? Catherine was plenty buxom, but she wasn’t that big around. Had he lost weight himself? Might he have joined a diet group lately? Kimberly Emberg was sort of in-between, big, but with a good waist indention.… Starling had specifically avoided thinking about Kimberly Emberg, but now the memory swamped her for a second. Starling saw Kimberly on the slab in Potter. Buffalo Bill hadn’t cared about her waxed legs, her carefully glittered fingernails: he looked at Kimberly’s flat bosom and it wasn’t good enough and he took his pistol and blew a starfish in her chest.

The door to the room pushed open a few inches. Starling felt the movement in her heart before she knew what it was. A cat came in, a large tortoiseshell cat with one eye gold, the other blue. It hopped up on the bed and rubbed against her. Looking for Fredrica.

Loneliness. Big lonesome girls trying to satisfy somebody.

The police had eliminated lonely-hearts clubs early. Did Buffalo Bill have another way to take advantage of loneliness? Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

Loneliness might have permitted Buffalo Bill an opening with Fredrica, but not with Catherine. Catherine wasn’t lonesome.

Kimberly was lonesome. Don’t start this. Kimberly, obedient and limp, past rigor mortis, being rolled over on the mortician’s table so Starling could fingerprint her. Stop it. Can’t stop it. Kimberly lonesome, anxious to please, had Kimberly ever rolled over obediently for someone, just to feel his heart beat against her back? She wondered if Kimberly had felt whiskers grating between her shoulder blades.

Staring into the lighted closet, Starling remembered Kimberly’s plump back, the triangular patches of skin missing from her shoulders.

Staring into the lighted closet, Starling saw the triangles on Kimberly’s shoulders outlined in the blue dashes of a dressmaking pattern. The idea swam away and circled and came again, came close enough for her to grab it this time and she did with a fierce pulse of joy: THEY’RE DARTS—HE TOOK THOSE TRIANGLES TO MAKE DARTS SO HE COULD LET OUT HER WAIST. MOTHER FUCKER CAN SEW. BUFFALO BILL’S TRAINED TO SERIOUSLY SEW—HE’S NOT JUST PICKING OUT READY-TO-WEAR.

What did Dr. Lecter say? “He’s making himself a girl suit out of real girls.” What did he say to me? “Do you sew, Clarice?” Damn straight I do.

Starling put her head back, closed her eyes for one second. Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.

She’d seen a telephone in the parlor. She started downstairs to use it, but Mrs. Bimmel’s reedy voice was calling up to her already, calling her to the phone.