Word Filler

CHAPTER 1

Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom

floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth. Clarice Starling

reached it flushed after a fast walk from Hogan's Alley on the firing range. She had grass

in her hair and grass stains on her FBI Academy windbreaker from diving to the ground

under fire in an arrest problem on the range.

No one was in the outer office, so she fluffed briefly by her reflection in the glass

doors. She knew she could look all right without primping. Her hands smelled of

gunsmoke, but there was no time to wash--- Section Chief Crawford's summons had said

now.

She found Jack Crawford alone in the cluttered suite of offices. He was standing

at someone else's desk talking on the telephone and she had a chance to look him over for

the first time in a year. What she saw disturbed her.

Normally, Crawford looked like a fit, middle-aged engineer who might have paid

his way through college playing baseball--- a crafty catcher, tough when he blocked the

plate. Now he was thin, his shirt collar was too big, and he had dark puffs under his

reddened eyes. Everyone who could read the papers knew Behavioral Science section

was catching hell. Starling hoped Crawford wasn't on the juice. That seemed most

unlikely here.

Crawford ended his telephone conversation with a sharp "No." He took her file

from under his arm and opened it.

"Starling, Clarice M., good morning," he said.

"Hello." Her smile was only polite.

"Nothing's wrong. I hope the call didn't spook you."

"No." Not totally true, Starling thought.

"Your instructors tell me you're doing well, top quarter of the class."

"I hope so, they haven't posted anything."

"I ask them from time to time."

That surprised Starling; she had written Crawford off as a two-faced recruiting

sergeant son of a bitch.

She had met Special Agent Crawford when he was a guest lecturer at the

University of Virginia. The quality of his criminology seminars was a factor in her

coming to the Bureau. She wrote him a note when she qualified for the Academy, but he

never replied, and for the three months she had been a trainee at Quantico, he had ignored

her.

Starling came from people who do not ask for favors or press for friendship, but

she was puzzled and regretful at Crawford's behavior. Now, in his presence, she liked

him again, she was sorry to note.

Clearly something was wrong with him. There was a peculiar cleverness in

Crawford, aside from his intelligence, and Starling had first noticed it in his color sense

and the textures of his clothing, even within the FBI-clone standards of agent dress. Now

he was neat but drab, as though he were molting.

"A job came up and I thought about you," he said. "It's not really a job, it's more

of an interesting errand. Push Berry's stuff off that chair and sit down. You put down here

that you want to come directly to Behavioral Science when you get through with the

Academy."

"I do."

"You have a lot of forensics, but no law enforcement background. We look for six

years, minimum."

"My father was a marshal, I know the life."

Crawford smiled a little. "What you do have is a double major in psychology and

criminology, and how many summers working in a mental health center--- two?"

"Two."

"Your counselor's license, is it current?"

"It's good for two more years. I got it before you had the seminar at UVA---

before I decided to do this."

"You got stuck in the hiring freeze."

Starling nodded. "I was lucky though--- I found out in time to qualify as a

Forensic Fellow. Then I could work in the lab until the Academy had an opening."

"You wrote to me about coming here, didn't you, and I don't think I answered--- I

know I didn't. I should have."

"You've had plenty else to do."

"Do you know about VI-CAP?"

"I know it's the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The Law Enforcement

Bulletin says you're working on a database, but you aren't operational yet."

Crawford nodded. "We've developed a questionnaire. It applies to all the known

serial murderers in modern times." He handed her a thick sheaf of papers in a flimsy

binding. "There's a section for investigators, and one for surviving victims, if any. The

blue is for the killer to answer if he will, and the pink is a series of questions an examiner

asks the killer, getting his reactions as well as his answers. It's a lot of paperwork."

Paperwork. Clarice Starling's self-interest snuffled ahead like a keen beagle. She

smelled a job offer coming--- probably the drudgery of feeding raw data into a new

computer system. It was tempting to get into Behavioral Science in any capacity she

could, but she knew what happens to a woman if she's ever pegged as a secretary--- it

sticks until the end of time. A choice was coming, and she wanted to choose well.

Crawford was waiting for something--- he must have asked her a question.

Starling had to scramble to recall it.

"What tests have you given? Minnesota Multiphasic, ever? Rorschach?"

"Yes, MMPI, never Rorschach," she said. "I've done Thematic Apperception and

I've given children Bender-Gestalt."

"Do you spook easily, Starling?"

"Not yet."

"See, we've tried to interview and examine all the thirty-two known serial

murderers we have in custody, to build up a database for psychological profiling is

unsolved cases. Most of them went along with it--- I think they're driven to show off, a

lot of them. Twenty-seven were willing to cooperate. Four on death row with appeals

pending clammed up, understandably. But the one we want the most, we haven't been

able to get. I want you to go after him tomorrow in the asylum."

Clarice Starling felt a glad knocking in her chest and some apprehension too.

"Who's the subject?"

"The psychiatrist--- Dr. Hannibal Lecter," Crawford said.

A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering.

Starling looked at Crawford steadily, but she was too still. "Hannibal the

Cannibal," she said.

"Yes."

"Yes, well--- Okay, right. I'm glad of the chance, but you have to know I'm

wondering--- why me?"

"Mainly because you're available," Crawford said. "I don't expect him to

cooperate. He's already refused, but it was through an intermediary--- the director of the

hospital. I have to be able to say our qualified examiner went to him and asked him

personally. There are reasons that don't concern you. I don't have anybody left in this

section to do it."

' "You're jammed--- Buffalo Bill--- and the things in Nevada," Starling said.

"You got it. It's the old story--- not enough warm bodies."

"You said tomorrow--- you're in a hurry. Any bearing on a current case?"

"No. I wish there were."

"If he balks on me, do you still want a psychological evaluation?"

"No. I'm waist-deep in inaccessible-patient evaluations of Dr. Lecter and they're

all different."

Crawford shook two vitamin C tablets into his palm, and mixed an Alka-Seltzer at

the water cooler to wash them down. "It's ridiculous, you know; Lecter's a psychiatrist

and he writes for the psychiatric journals himself--- extraordinary stuff--- but it's never

about his own little anomalies. He pretended to go along with the hospital director,

Chilton, once in some tests--- sitting around with a blood-pressure cuff on his penis,

looking at wreck pictures--- then Lecter published first what he'd learned about Chilton

and made a fool out of him. He responds to serious correspondence from psychiatric

students in fields unrelated to his case, and that's all he does. If he won't talk to you, I just

want straight reporting. How does he look, how does his cell look, what's he doing. Local

color, so to speak. Watch out for the press going in and coming out. Not the real press,

the supermarket press. They love Lecter even better than Prince Andrew."

"Didn't a sleazo magazine offer him fifty thousand dollars for some recipes? I

seem to remember that," Starling said.

Crawford nodded. "I'm pretty sure the National Tattler has bought somebody

inside the hospital and they may know you're coming after I make the appointment."

Crawford leaned forward until he faced her at a distance of two feet. She watched

his half-glasses blur the bags under his eyes. He had gargled recently with Listerine.

"Now. I want your full attention, Starling. Are you listening to me?"

"Yes sir."

"Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton, the head of the mental

hospital, will go over the physical procedure you use to deal with him. Don't deviate from

it. Do not deviate from it one iota for any reason. If Lecter talks to you at all, he'll just be

trying to find out about you. It's the kind of curiosity that makes a snake look in a bird's

nest. We both know you have to back-and-forth a little in interviews, but you tell him no

specifics about yourself. You don't want any of your personal facts in his head. You

know what he did to Will Graham."

"I read about it when it happened."

"He gutted Will with a linoleum knife when Will caught up with him. It's a

wonder Will didn't die. Remember the Red Dragon? Lecter turned Francis Dolarhyde

onto Will and his family. Will's face looks like damn Picasso drew him, thanks to Lecter.

He tore a nurse up in the asylum. Do your job, just don't ever forget what he is."

"And what's that? Do you know?"

"I know he's a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure. Maybe you'll find

out; I didn't pick you out of a hat, Starling. You asked me a couple of interesting

questions when I was at UVA. The Director will see your own report over your signature-

-- if it's clear and tight and organized. I decide that. And I will have it by 0900 Sunday.

Okay, Starling, carry on in the prescribed manner."

Crawford smiled at her, but his eyes were dead.

CHAPTER 2

Dr. Frederick Chilton, fifty-eight, administrator of the Baltimore State Hospital

for the Criminally Insane, has a long, wide desk upon which there are no hard or sharp

objects. Some of the staff call it "the moat." Other staff members don't know what the

word moat means. Dr. Chilton remained seated behind his desk when Clarice Starling

came into his office.

"We've had a lot of detectives here, but I can't remember one so attractive,"

Chilton 'said without getting up.

Starling knew without thinking about it that the shine on his extended hand was

lanolin from patting his hair. She let go before he did.

"It is Miss Sterling, isn't it?"

"It's Starling, Doctor, with an a. Thank you for your time."

"So the FBI is going to the girls like everything else, ha, ha." He added the

tobacco smile he uses to separate his sentences.

"The Bureau's improving, Dr. Chilton. It certainly is."

"Will you be in Baltimore for several days? You know, you can have just as good

a time here as you can in Washington or New York, if you know the town."

She looked away to spare herself his smile and knew at once that he had

registered her distaste. "I'm sure it's a great town, but my instructions are to see Dr.

Lecter and report back this afternoon."

"Is there someplace I could call you in Washington for a follow-up, later on?"

"Of course. It's kind of you to think of it. Special Agent Jack Crawford's in charge

of this project, and you can always reach me through him."

"I see," Chilton said. His cheeks, mottled with pink, clashed with the improbable

red-brown of his coif. ''Give me your identification, please." He let her remain standing

through his leisurely examination of her ID card. Then he handed it back and rose. "This

won't take much time. Come along."

"I understood you'd brief me, Dr. Chilton," Starling said.

"I can do that while we walk." He came around his desk, looking at his watch. "I

have a lunch in half an hour."

Dammit, she should have read him better, quicker. He might not be a total jerk.

He might know something useful. It wouldn't have hurt her to simper once, even if she

wasn't at it.

"Dr. Chilton, I have an appointment with you now. It was set at your convenience,

when you could give me some time. Things could come up during the interview--- I may

need to go over some of his responses with you."

"I really, really doubt it. Oh, I need to make a telephone call before we go. I'll

catch up with you in the outer office."

"I'd like to leave my coat and umbrella here."

"Out there," Chilton said. "Give them to Alan in the outer office. He'll put them

away."

Alan wore the pajamalike garment issued to the inmates. He was wiping out

ashtrays with the tail of his shirt.

He rolled his tongue around in his cheek as he took Starling's coat.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're more than welcome. How often do you shit?" Alan asked.

"What did you say?"

"Does it come out lo-o-o-o-nnng?"

"I'll hang these somewhere myself."

"You don't have anything in the way--- you can bend over and watch it come out

and see if it changes color when the air hits it, do you do that? Does it look like you have

a big brown tail?" He wouldn't let go of the coat.

"Dr. Chilton wants you in his office, right now," Starling said.

"No I don't," Dr. Chilton said. "Put the coat in the closet, Alan, and don't get it out

while we're gone. Do it. I had a full-time office girl, but the cutbacks robbed me of her.

Now the girl who let you in types three hours a day, and then I have Alan. Where are all

the office girls, Miss Starling?" His spectacles flashed at her. "Are you armed?"

"No, I'm not armed."

"May I see your purse and briefcase?"

"You saw my credentials."

"And they say you're a student. Let me see your things, please."

----------

Clarice Starling flinched as the first of the heavy steel gates clashed shut behind

her and the bolt shot home. Chilton walked slightly ahead, down the green institutional

corridor in an atmosphere of Lysol and distant slammings. Starling was angry at herself

for letting Chilton put his hand in her purse and briefcase, and she stepped hard on the

anger so that she could concentrate. It was all right. She felt her control solid beneath her,

like a good gravel bottom in a fast current.

"Lecter's a considerable nuisance," Chilton said over his shoulder. "It takes an

orderly at least ten minutes a day to remove the staples from the publications he receives.

We tried to eliminate or reduce his subscriptions, but he wrote a brief and the court

overruled us. The volume of his personal mail used to be enormous. Thankfully, it's

dwindled since he's been overshadowed by other creatures in the news. For a while it

seemed that every little student doing a master's thesis in psychology wanted something

from Lecter in it. The medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of

his byline."

"He did a good piece on surgical addiction in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, I

thought," Starling said.

"You did, did you? We tried to study Lecter. We thought, 'Here's an opportunity

to make a landmark study'--- it's so rare to get one alive."

"One what?"

"A pure sociopath, that's obviously what he is. But he's impenetrable, much too

sophisticated for the standard tests. And, my, does he hate us. He thinks I'm his nemesis.

Crawford's very clever--- isn't he?--- using you on Lecter.

"How do you mean, Dr. Chilton?"

''A young woman to 'turn him on,' I believe you call it. I don't believe Lecter's

seen a woman in several years--- he may have gotten a glimpse of one of the cleaning

people. We generally keep women out of there. They're trouble in detention."

Well fuck off, Chilton. "I graduated from the University of Virginia with honors,

Doctor. It's not a charm school."

"Then you should be able to remember the rules: Do not reach through the bars,

do not touch the bars. You pass him nothing but soft paper. No pens, no pencils. He has

his own felt-tipped pens some of the time. The paper you pass him must be free of

staples, paper clips, or pins. Items are only passed to him through the sliding food carrier.

Items come back out through the sliding food carrier. No exceptions. Do not accept

anything he attempts to hold out to you through the barrier. Do you understand me?"

"I understand."

They had passed through two more gates and left the natural light behind. Now

they were beyond the wards where inmates can mix together, down in the region where

there can be no windows and no mixing. The hallway lights are covered with heavy grids,

like the lights in the engine rooms of ships. Dr. Chilton paused beneath one. When their

footfalls stopped, Starling could hear somewhere beyond the wall the ragged end of a

voice ruined by shouting.

"Lecter is never outside his cell without wearing full restraints and a mouthpiece,"

Chilton said. "I'm going to show you why. He was a model of cooperation for the first

year after he was committed. Security around him was slightly relaxed--- this was under

the previous administration, you understand. On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, he

complained of chest pain and he was taken to the dispensary. His restraints were removed

to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. When the nurse bent over him, he did

this to her." Chilton handed Clarice Starling a dog-eared photograph. "The doctors

managed to save one of her eyes. Lecter was hooked up to the monitors the entire time.

He broke her jaw to get at her tongue. His pulse never got over eighty-five, even when he

swallowed it."

Starling didn't know which was worse, the photograph or Chilton's attention as he

gleaned her face with fast grabby eyes. She thought of a thirsty chicken pecking tears off

her face.

"I keep him in here," Chilton said, and pushed a button beside heavy double doors

of security glass. A big orderly let them into the block beyond.

Starling made a tough decision and stopped just inside the doors. "Dr. Chilton, we

really need these test results. If Dr. Lecter feels you're his enemy--- if he's fixed on you,

just as you've said--- we might have more luck if I approached him by myself. What do

you think?"

Chilton's cheek twitched. "That's perfectly fine with me. You might have

suggested that in my office. I could have sent an orderly with you and saved the time."

"I could have suggested it there if you'd briefed me there."

"I don't expect I'll see you again, Miss Starling--- Barney, when she's finished

with Lecter, ring for someone to bring her out."

Chilton left without looking at her again.

Now there was only the big impassive orderly and the soundless clock behind him

and his wire mesh cabinet with the Mace and restraints, mouthpiece and tranquilizer gun.

A wall rack held a long pipe device with a U on the end for pinioning the violent to the

wall.

The orderly was looking at her. "Dr. Chilton told you, don't touch the bars?" His

voice was both high and hoarse. She was reminded of Aldo Ray.

"Yes, he told me."

"Okay. It's past the others, the last cell on the right. Stay toward the middle of the

corridor as you go down, and don't mind anything. You can take him his mail, get off on

the right foot." The orderly seemed privately amused. "You just put it in the tray and let it

roll through. If the tray's inside, you can pull it back with the cord, or he can send it back.

He can't reach you where the tray stops outside." The orderly gave her two magazines,

their loose pages spilling out, three newspapers and several opened letters.

The corridor was about thirty yards long, with cells on both sides. Some were

padded cells with an observation window, long and narrow like an archery slit; in the

center of the door. Others were standard prison cells, with a wall of bars opening on the

corridor. Clarice Starling was aware of figures in the cells, but she tried not to look at

them. She was more than halfway down when a voice hissed, "I can smell your cunt."

She gave no sign that she had heard it, and went on.

The lights were on in the last cell. She moved toward the left side of the corridor

to see into it as she approached, knowing her heels announced her.

Chapter 3

Dr. Lecter's cell is well beyond the others, facing only a closet across the corridor,

and it is unique in ether ways. The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance

greater than the human reach, is a second barrier, a stout nylon net stretched from floor to

ceiling and wall to wall. Behind the net, Starling could see a table bolted to the floor and

piled high with softcover books and papers, and a straight chair, also fastened down.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of

Vogue. He held the loose pages in his right hand and put them beside him one by one

with his left. Dr. Lecter has six fingers on his left hand.

Clarice Starling stopped a little distance from the bars, about the length of a small

foyer.

"Dr. Lecter." Her voice sounded all right to her.

He looked up from his reading.

For a steep second she thought his gaze hummed, but it was only her blood she

heard.

"My name is Clarice Starling. May I talk with you?" Courtesy was implicit in her

distance and her tone.

Dr. Lecter considered, his finger pressed against his pursed lips. Then he rose in

his own time and came forward smoothly in his cage, stopping short of the nylon web

without looking at it, as though he chose the distance.

She could see that he was small, sleek; in his hands and arms she saw wiry

strength like her own.

"Good morning," he said, as though he had answered the door. His cultured voice

has a slight metallic rasp beneath it, possibly from disuse.

Dr. Lecter's eyes are maroon and they reflect the light in pinpoints of red.

Sometimes the points of light seem to fly like sparks to his center. His eyes held Starling

whole.

She came a measured distance closer to the bars. The hair on her forearms rose

and pressed against her sleeves.

"Doctor, we have a hard problem in psychological profiling. I want to ask you for

your help."

" 'We' being Behavioral Science at Quantico. You're one of Jack Crawford's, I

expect."

"I am, yes."

"May I see your credentials?"

She hadn't expected this. "I showed them at the... office."

"You mean you showed them to Frederick Chilton, Ph.D.?"

"Yes."

"Did you see his credentials?"

"No."

"The academic ones don't make extensive reading, I can tell you. Did you meet

Alan? Isn't he charming? Which of them had you rather talk with?"

"On the whole, I'd say Alan."

"You could be a reporter Chilton let in for money. I think I'm entitled to see your

credentials."

"All right." She held up her laminated ID card.

"I can't read it at this distance, send it through, please."

"I can't."

"Because it's hard."

"Yes."

"Ask Barney."

The orderly came and considered. "Dr. Lecter, I'll let this come through. But if

you don't return it when I ask you to--- if we have to bother everybody and secure you to

get it--- then I'll be upset. If you upset me, you'll have to stay bundled up until I feel

better toward you. Meals through the tube, dignity pants changed twice a day--- the

works. And I'll hold your mail for a week. Got it?"

"Certainly, Barney."

The card rolled through on the tray and Dr. Lecter held it to the light.

"A trainee? It says 'trainee.' Jack Crawford sent a trainee to interview me?" He

tapped the card against his small white teeth and breathed in its smell.

"Dr. Lecter," Barney said.

"Of course." He put the card back in the tray carrier and Barney pulled it to the

outside.

"I'm still in training at the Academy, yes," Starling said, "but we're not discussing

the FBI--- we're talking psychology. Can you decide for yourself if I'm qualified in what

we talk about?"

"Ummmm," Dr. Lecter said. "Actually... that's rather slippery of you. Barney, do

you think Officer Starling might have a chair?"

"Dr. Chilton didn't tell me anything about a chair."

"What do your manners tell you, Barney?"

"Would you like a chair?" Barney asked her. "We could have had one, but he

never--- well, usually nobody needs to stay that long."

"Yes, thank you," Starling said.

Barney brought a folding chair from the locked closet across the hall, set it up,

and left them.

"Now," Lecter said, sitting sideways at his table to face her, "what did Miggs say

to you?"

"Who?"

"Multiple Miggs, in the cell down there. He hissed at you. What did he say?"

"He said, 'I can smell your cunt."'

"I see. I myself cannot. You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air

du Temps, but not today. Today you are determinedly unperfumed. How do you feel

about what Miggs said?"

"He's hostile for reasons I couldn't know. It's too bad. He's hostile to people,

people are hostile to him. It's a loop."

"Are you hostile to him?"

"I'm sorry he's disturbed. Beyond that, he's noise. How did you know about the

perfume?"

"A puff from your bag when you got out your card. Your bag is lovely."

"Thank you."

"You brought your best bag, didn't you?"

"Yes." It was true. She had saved for the classic casual handbag, and it was the

best item she owned.

"It's much better than your shoes."

"Maybe they'll catch up."

"I have no doubt of it."

"Did you do the drawings on your walls, Doctor?"

"Do you think I called in a decorator?"

"The one over the sink is a European city?"

"It's Florence. That's the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo, seen from the

Belvedere."

"Did you do it from memory, all the detail?"

"Memory, Officer Starling, is what I have instead of a view."

"The other one is a crucifixion? The middle cross is empty.'

"It's Golgotha after the Deposition. Crayon and Magic Marker on butcher paper.

It's what the thief who had been promised Paradise really got, when they took the paschal

lamb away."

"And what was that?"

"His legs broken of course, just like his companion who mocked Christ. Are you

entirely innocent of the Gospel of St. John? Look at Duccio, then--- he paints accurate

crucifixions. How is Will Graham? How does he look?"

"I don't know Will Graham."

"You know who he is. Jack Crawford's protégé. The one before you. How does

his face look?"

"I've never seen him."

"This is called 'cutting up a few old touches,' Officer Starling, you don't mind do

you?"

Beats of silence and she plunged.

"Better than that, we could touch up a few old cuts here. I brought---"

"No. No, that's stupid and wrong. Never use wit in a segue. Listen, understanding

a witticism and replying to it makes your subject perform a fast, detached scan that is

inimical to mood. It is on the plank of mood that we proceed. You were doing fine, you'd

been courteous and receptive to courtesy, you'd established trust by telling the

embarrassing truth about Miggs, and then you come in with a ham-handed segue into

your questionnaire, It won't do."

"Dr. Lecter, you're an experienced clinical psychiatrist. Do you think I'm dumb

enough to try to run some kind of mood scam on you? Give me some credit. I'm asking

you to respond to the questionnaire, and you will or you won't. Would it hurt to look at

the thing?"

"Officer Starling, have you read any of the papers coming out of Behavioral

Science recently?"

"Yes."

"So have I. The FBI stupidly refuses to send me the Law Enforcement Bulletin,

but I get it from secondhand dealers and I have the News from John Jay, and the

psychiatric journals. They're dividing the people who practice serial murder into two

groups--- organized and disorganized. What do you think of that?"

"It's... fundamental, they evidently---"

"Simplistic is the word you want. In fact, most psychology is puerile, Officer

Starling, and that practiced in Behavioral Science is on a level with phrenology.

Psychology doesn't get very good material to start with. Go to any college psychology

department and look at the students and faculty: ham radio enthusiasts and other

personality-deficient buffs. Hardly the best brains on the campus: Organized and

disorganized--- a real bottom-feeder thought of that."

"How would you change the classification?"

"I wouldn't."

"Speaking of publications, I read your pieces on surgical addiction and left-side,

right-side facial displays."

"Yes, they were first-rate," Dr. Lecter said.

"I thought so, and so did Jack Crawford. He pointed them out to me. That's one

reason he's anxious for you---"

"Crawford the Stoic is anxious? He must be busy if he's recruiting help from the

student body."

"He is, and he wants---"

"Busy with Buffalo Bill."

"I expect so."

"No. Not 'I expect so.' Officer Starling, you know perfectly well it's Buffalo Bill. I

thought Jack Crawford might have sent you to ask me about that."

"No."

"Then you're not working around to it."

"No, I came because we need your---"

"What do you know about Buffalo Bill?"

"Nobody knows much."

"Has everything been in the papers?"

"I think so. Dr. Lecter, I haven't seen any confidential material on that case, my

job is---"

"How many women has Buffalo Bill used?"

"The police have found five."

"All flayed?"

"Partially, yes."

"The papers have never explained his name. Do you know why he's called

Buffalo Bill?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

"I'll tell you if you'll look at this questionnaire."

"I'll look, that's all. Now, why?"

"It started as a bad joke in Kansas City homicide."

"Yes...?"

"They call him Buffalo Bill because he skins his humps."

Starling discovered that she had traded feeling frightened for feeling cheap. Of the

two, she preferred feeling frightened.

"Send through the questionnaire."

Starling rolled the blue section through on the tray. She sat still while Lecter

flipped through it.

He dropped it back in the carrier. "Oh, Officer Starling, do you think you can

dissect me with this blunt little tool?"

"No, I think you can provide some insight and advance this study."

"And what possible reason could I have to do that?"

"Curiosity."

"About what?"

"About why you're here. About what happened to you."

"Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a

set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling.

You've got everybody in moral dignity pants--- nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at

me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?"

"I think you've been destructive. For me it's the same thing."

"Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire,

and then there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.' "

"Deliberate---"

"I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily?

Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special Mass. Was that evil?

If so, who did it? If He's up there, He just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans---

it all comes from the same place."

"I can't explain you, Doctor, but I know who can."

He stopped her with his upraised hand. The hand was shapely, she noted, and the

middle finger perfectly replicated. It is the rarest form of polydactyly.

When he spoke again, his tone was soft and pleasant. "You'd like to quantify me,

Officer Starling. You're so ambitious, aren't you? Do you know what you look like to me,

with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You're a well-scrubbed,

hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones--- all surface shine

when you stalk some little answer. And you're bright behind them, aren't you? Desperate

not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're

not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia

Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women's Army Corps, wasn't it? Let me tell you something specific

about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-abeads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn't

that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all

sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot

of things, doesn't it? And, taste isn't kind. When you think about this conversation, you'll

remember the dumb animal hurt in his face when you got rid of him.

"If the add-a-beads got tacky, what else will as you go along? You wonder don't

you, at night?" Dr. Lecter asked in the kindest of tones.

Starling raised her head to face him. "You see a lot, Dr. Lecter. I won't deny

anything you've said. But here's the question you're answering for me right now, whether

you mean to or not: Are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at

yourself? It's hard to face. I've found that out in the last few minutes. How about it? Look

at yourself and write down the truth. What more fit or complex subject could you find?

Or maybe you're afraid of yourself."

"You're tough, aren't you, Officer Starling?"

"Reasonably so, yes."

"And you'd hate to think you were common. Would'nt that sting? My! Well you're

far from common, Officer Starling. All you have is fear of it. What are your add-a-beads,

seven millimeter?"

"Seven."

"Let me make a suggestion. Get some loose, drilled tiger's eyes and string them

alternately with the gold beads. You might want to do two-and-three or one-and-two,

however looks best to you. The tiger's eyes will pick up the color of your own eyes and

the highlights in your hair. Has anyone ever sent you a Valentine?"

"Yep."

"We're already into Lent. Valentine's Day is only a week away, hmmmm, are you

expecting some?"

"You never know."

"No, you never do... I've been thinking about Valentine's Day. It reminds me of

something funny. Now that I think of it, I could make you very happy on Valentine's

Day, Clarice Starling."

"How, Doctor Lecter?"

"By sending you a wonderful Valentine. I'll have to think about it. Now please

excuse me. Good-bye, Officer Starling."

"And the study?"

"A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and

a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling."

Hannibal Lecter, polite to the last, did not give her his back. He stepped backward

from the barrier before he turned to his cot again, and lying on it, became as remote from

her as a stone crusader lying on a tomb.

Starling felt suddenly empty, as though she had given blood. She took longer than

necessary to put the papers back in her briefcase because she didn't immediately trust her

legs. Starling was soaked with the failure she detested. She folded her chair and leaned it

against the utility closet door. She would have to pass Miggs again. Barney in the

distance appeared to be reading. She could call him to come for her. Damn Miggs. It was

no worse than passing construction crews or delivery louts every day in the city. She

started back down the corridor.

Close beside her, Miggs' voice hissed, "I bit my wrist so I can diiiieeeeeeeee---

see how it bleeds?"

She should have called Barney but, startled, she looked into the cell, saw Miggs

flick his fingers and felt the warm spatter on her cheek and shoulder before she could turn

away.

She got away from him, registered that it was semen, not blood, and Lecter was

calling to her, she could hear him. Dr. Lecter's voice behind her, the cutting rasp in it

more pronounced.

"Officer Starling."

He was up and calling after her as she walked. She rummaged in her purse for

tissues.

Behind her, "Officer Starling."

She was on the cold rails of her control now, making steady progress toward the

gate.

"Officer Starling." A new note in Lecter's voice.

She stopped. What in God's name do I want this bad? Miggs hissed something

she didn't listen to.

She stood again in front of Letter's cell and saw the rare spectacle of the doctor

agitated. She knew that he could smell it on her. He could smell everything.

"I would not have had that happen to you. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to

me."

It was as though committing murders had purged him of lesser rudeness. Or

perhaps, Starling thought, it excited him to see her marked in this particular way. She

couldn't tell. The sparks in his eyes flew into his darkness like fireflies down a cave.

Whatever it is, use it, Jesus! She held up her briefcase. "Please do this for me."

Maybe she was too late; he was calm again.

"No. But I'll make you happy that you came. I'll give you something else. I'll give

you what you love the most, Clarice Starling."

"What's that, Dr. Lecter?"

"Advancement, of course. It works out perfectly--- I'm so glad. Valentine's Day

made me a think of it." The smile over white teeth could have come for any reason. He

spoke so softly she could barely hear. "Look in Raspail's car for your Valentines. Did you

hear me? Look in Raspail's car for your Valentines. You'd better go now; I don't think

Miggs could manage again so soon, even if he is crazy, do you?"

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 brownchecked 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 tail coat. 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 sweet-breads.

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 contrib-

uted 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 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 question 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.

CHAPTER 5

Jark Crawford, fifty-three, reads in a wing chair by a low lamp in the bedroom of

his home. He faces two double beds, both raised on blocks to hospital height. One is his

own; in the other lies his wife, Bella. Crawford can hear her breathing through her mouth.

It has been two days since she last could stir or speak to him.

She misses a breath. Crawford looks up from his book, over his half-glasses. He

puts the book down. Bella breathes again, a flutter and then a full breath. He rises to put

his hand on her, to take her blood pressure and her pulse. Over the months he has become

expert with the blood pressure cuff.

Because he will not leave her at night, he has installed a bed for himself beside

her. Because he reaches out to her in the dark, his bed is high, like hers.

Except for the height of the beds and the minimal plumbing necessary for Bella's

comfort, Crawford has managed to keep this from looking like a sickroom. There are

flowers, but not too many. No pills are in sight--- Crawford emptied a linen closet in the

hall and filled it with her medicines and apparatus before he brought her from the

hospital. (It was the second time he had carried her across the threshold of that house and

the thought nearly unmanned him.)

A warm front has come up from the south. The windows are open and the

Virginia air is soft and fresh. Small frogs peep to one another in the dark.

The room is spotless, but the carpet has begun to begun to nap--- Crawford will

not run the noisy vacuum cleaner in the room and uses a manual carpet sweeper that is

not as good. He pads to the closet and turns on the light. Two clipboards hang on the

inside of the door. On one he notes Bella's pulse and blood pressure. His figures and

those of the day nurse alternate in a column that stretches over many yellow pages, many

days and nights. On the other clipboard, the day-shift nurse has signed off Bella's

medication.

Crawford is capable of giving any medication she may need in the night.

Following a nurse's directions, he practiced injections on a lemon and then on his thighs

before he brought her home.

Crawford stands over her for perhaps three minutes, looking down into her face.

A lovely scarf of silk moiré covers her hair like a turban. She insisted on it, for as long as

she could insist. Now he insists on it. He moistens her lips with glycerine and removes a

speck from the corner of her eye with his broad thumb. She does not stir. It is not yet time

to turn her.

At the mirror, Crawford assures himself that he is not sick, that he doesn't have to

go into the ground with her, that he himself is well. He catches himself doing this and it

shames him.

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books

beside him to find the one that is warm.

CHAPTER 6

On Monday morning, Clarice Starling found this message from Crawford in her

mailbox:

CS:

Proceed on the Raspail car. On

your own time. My office will provide

you a credit card number for long

distance calls. Ck with me before you

contact estate or go anywhere. Report

Wednesday 1600 hours.

The Director got your Lecter

report over your signature. You did well.

JC

SAIC/

Section 8

Starling felt pretty good. She knew Crawford was just giving her an exhausted

mouse to bat around for practice. But he wanted to teach her. He wanted her to do well.

For Starling, that beat courtesy every time.

Raspail had been dead far eight years. What evience could have lasted in a car

that long?

She knew from family experience that, because automobiles depreciate so rapidly,

an appellate court will let survivors sell a car before probate, the money going into

escrow. It seemed unlikely that even an estate as tangled and disputed as Raspail's would

hold a car this long.

There was also the problem of time. Counting her lunch break, Starling had an

hour and fifteen minutes a day free to use the telephone during business hours. She'd

have to report to Crawford on Wednesday afternoon. So she had a total of three hours and

forty-five minutes to trace the car, spread over three days, if she used her study periods

and made up the study at night.

She had good notes from her Investigative Procedures Classes, and she'd have a

chance to ask general questions of her instructors.

During her Monday lunch, personnel at the Baltimore County Courthouse put

Starling on hold and forgot her three times. During her study period she reached a

friendly clerk at the courthouse, who pulled the probate records on the Raspail estate.

The clerk confirmed that permission had been granted for sale of an auto and gave

Starling the make and serial number of the car, and the name of a subsequent off the title

transfer.

On Tuesday, she wasted half her lunch hour trying to chase down that name. It

cost her the rest of her lunch period to find out that the Maryland Department of Motor

Vehicles is not equipped to trace a vehicle by serial number, only by registration number

or current tag number.

On Tuesday afternoon, a downpour drove the trainees in from the firing range. In

a conference room steamy with damp clothing and sweat, John Brigham, the ex-Marine

firearms instructor, chose to test Starling's hand strength in front of the class by seeing

how many times she could pull the trigger on a Model 19 Smith & Wesson in sixty

seconds.

She managed seventy-four with her left hand, puffed a strand of hair out of her

eyes, and started over with her right while another student counted. She was in the

Weaver stance, well braced, the front sight in sharp focus, the rear sight and her

makeshift target properly blurred. Midway through her minute, she let her mind wander

to get it off the pain. The target on the wall came into focus. It was a certificate of

appreciation from the Interstate Commerce enforcement division made out to her

instructor, John Brigham.

She questioned Brigham out of the side of her mouth while the other student

counted the clicks of the revolver.

"How do you trace the current registration..."

"...sixtyfivesixtysixsixtysevensixtyeightsixty..."

"...of a car when you've only got the serial number..."

"seventyeightseventynineeightyeightyone..."

"...and the make? You don't have a current tag number."

"...eightynine ninety. Time."

"All right, you people," the instructor said, "I want you to take note of that. Hand

strength's a major factor in steady combat shooting. Some of you gentlemen are worried

I'll call on you next. Your worries would be justified-Starling is well above average with

both hands. That's because she works at it. She works at it with the little squeezy things

you all have access to. Most of you are not used to squeezing anything harder than your"

---ever vigilant against his native Marine terminology, he groped for a polite simile---

"zits," he said at last. "Get serious, Starling, you're not good enough either. I want to see

that left hand over ninety before you graduate. Pair up and time each other--- chop-chop.

"Not you, Starling, come here. What else have you got on the car?"

"Just the serial number and make, that's it. One prior owner five years ago."

"All right, listen. Where most people f--- fall into error is trying to leapfrog

through the registrations from one owner to the next. You get fouled up between states. I

mean, cops even do that sometimes. And registrations and tag numbers are all the

computer's got. We're all accustomed to using tag numbers or registration numbers, not

vehicle serial numbers."

The clicking of the blue-handled practice revolvers was loud all over the room

and he had to rumble in her ear.

"There's one way it's easy. R. L. Polk and Company, that publishes city

directories--- they also put out a list current car registrations by make and consecutive

serial number. It's the only place. Car dealers steer then advertising with them. How'd you

know to ask me?"

"You were ICC enforcement, I figured you'd traced a lot of vehicles. Thanks."

"Pay me back--- get that left hand up where it ought to be and let's shame some of

these lilyfingers."

Back in her phone booth during study period, her hands trembled so that her notes

were barely legible. Raspail's car was a Ford. There was a Ford dealer near the

University of Virginia who for years had patiently done what he could with her Pinto.

Now, just as patiendy, the dealer poked through his Polk listings for her. He came back to

the telephone with the name and address of the person who had last registered Benjamin

Raspail's car.

Clarice is on a roll, Clarice has got control. Quit being silly and call the man up

at his home in, lemme see, Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas. Jack Crawford will never let

me go down there, but at least I can confirm who's got the ride.

No answer, and again no answer. The ring sounded funny and far away, a double

rump-rump like a party line. She tried at night and got no answer.

At Wednesday lunch period, a man answered Starling's call:

"WPOQ Plays the Oldies."

"Hello, I'm calling to---"

"I wouldn't care for any aluminum siding and I don't want to live in no trailer

court in Florida, what else you got?"

Starling heard a lot of the Arkansas hills in the man's voice. She could speak that

with anybody when she wanted to, and her time was short.

"Yessir, if you could help me out I'd be much obliged. I'm trying to get ahold of

Mr. Lomax Bardwell? This is Clarice Starling?"

"It's Starling somebody," the man yelled to the rest of his household. "What do

you want with Bardwell?"

"This is the Mid-South regional office of the Ford recall division? He's entitled to

some warranty work on his LTD free of charge?"

"I'm Bardwell. I thought you was trying to sell me something on that cheap long

distance. It's way too late for any adjustment, I need the whole thing. Me and the wife

was in Little Rock, pulling out of the Southland Mall there?"

"Yessir."

"Durn rod come out through the oil pan. Oil all over everywhere and that Orkin

truck that's got the big bug on top of it? He hit that oil and got sideways."

"Lord have mercy."

"Knocked the Fotomat booth slap off the blocks and the glass fell out. Fotomat

fella come wandering out addled. Had to keep him out of the road."

"Well I'll be. What happened to it then?"

"What happened to what?"

"'The car."

"I told Buddy Sipper at the wrecking yard he could have it for fifty if he'd come

get it. I expect he's parted it out."

"Could you tell me what his telephone number is, Mr. Bardwell?"

"What do you want with Sipper? If anybody gets something out of it, it ought to

be me."

"I understand that, sir. I just do what they tell me till five o'clock, and they said

find the car. Have you got that number, please?"

"I can't find my phone book. It's been gone a good while now. You know how it is

with these grandbabies. Central ought to give it to you, it's Sipper Salvage."

"Much oblige, Mr. Bardwell."

The salvage yard confirmed that the automobile had Been stripped and pressed

into a cube to be recycled. The foreman read Starling the vehicle serial number from his

records.

Shit House Mouse, thought Starling, not entirely out of the accent. Dead end.

Some Valentine.

Starling rested her head against the cold coin box in the telephone booth. Ardelia

Mapp, her books on her hip, pecked on the door of the booth and handed in an Orange

Crush.

"Much oblige, Ardelia. I got to make one more call. If I can get done with that in

time, I'll catch up with you in the cafeteria, okay?"

"I was so in hopes you'd overcome that ghastly dialect," Mapp said. "Books are

available to help you. I never use the colorful patois of my housing project anymore. You

come talking that mushmouth, people say you eat up with the dumb-ass, girl." Mapp

closed the phone booth door.

Starling felt she had to try for more information from Lecter. If she already had

the appointment, maybe Crawford would let her return to the asylum. She dialed Dr.

Chilton's number, but she never got past his secretary.

"Dr. Chilton is with the coroner and the assistant district attorney," the woman

said. "He's already spoken to your supervisor and he has nothing to say to you. Goodbye."

CHAPTER 7

"Your friend Miggs is dead," Crawford said. "Did you tell me everything,

Starling?" Crawford's tired face was as sensitive to signals as the dished ruff of an owl,

and as free of mercy.

"How?" She felt numb and she had to handle it.

"Swallowed his tongue sometime before daylight. Letter suggested it to him,

Chilton thinks. The overnight orderly -heard Lecter talking softly to Miggs. Lecter knew

a lot about Miggs. He talked to him for a little while, but the overnight couldn't hear what

Lecter said. Miggs was crying for a while, and then he stopped. Did you tell me

everything, Starling?"

"Yes sir. Between the report and my memo, there's everything, almost verbatim."

"Chilton called up to complain about you..." Crawford waited, and seemed

pleased when she wouldn't ask. "I told him I found your behavior satisfactory. Chilton's

trying to forestall a civil rights investigation."

"Will there be one?"

"Sure, if Miggs' family wants it. Civil Rights Division will do probably eight

thousand this year. They'll be glad to add Miggs to the list." Crawford studied her. "You

okay?"

"I don't know how to feel about it."

"You don't have to feel any particular way about it. Lecter did it to amuse himself.

He knows they can't really touch him for it, so why not? Chilton takes his books and his

toilet seat for a while is all, and he doesn't get any Jell-O." Crawford laced his fingers

over his stomach and compared his thumbs. "Lecter asked you about me, didn't he?"

"He asked if you were busy. I said yes."

"That's all? You didn't leave out anything personal because I wouldn't want to see

it?"

"No. He said you were a Stoic, but I put that in."

"Yes, you did. Nothing else?"

"No, I didn't leave anything out. You don't think I traded some kind of gossip, and

that's why he talked to me."

"No."

"I don't know anything personal about you, and if I did I wouldn't discuss it. If

you've got a problem believing that, let's get it straight now."

"I'm satisfied. Next item. "

"You thought something, or---"

"Proceed to the next item, Starling."

"Lecter s hint about Raspail's car is a dead end. It was mashed into a cube four

months ago in Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas, and sold for recycling. Maybe if I go back

in and talk to him, he'll tell me more."

"You've exhausted the lead?"

"Yes."

"Why do you think the car Raspail drove was his only car?"

"It was the only one registered, he was single, I assumed---"

"Aha, hold it." Crawford's forefinger pointed to some principle invisible in the air

between them. "You assumed. You assumed, Starling. Look here." Crawford wrote

assume on a legal pad. Several of Starling's instnictors had picked this up from Crawford

and used it, but Starling didn't reveal that she'd seen it before.

Crawford began to underline: "If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling,

you can make an ass out of u and me both." He leaned back, pleased: "Raspail collected

cars, did you know that?"

"No, does the estate still have them?"

"I don't know. Do you think you could manage to find out?"

"Yes, I can."

"Where would you start?"

"His executor."

"A lawyer in Baltimore, a Chinese, I seem to remember," Crawford said.

"Everett Yow," Starling said: "He's in the Baltimore phone book."

"Have you given any thought to the question of a warrant to search Raspail's car?"

Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the know-it-all caterpillar in

Lewis Carroll.

Starling didn't dare give it back, much. "Since Raspail is deceased and riot

suspected of anything, if we have permission of his executor to search the car, then it is a

valid search, and the fruit admissible evidence in other matters at law," she recited.

"Precisely," Crawford said. "Tell you what: I'll advise the Baltimore field office

you'll be up there. Saturday, Starling, on your own time. Go feel the fruit, if there is any."

Crawford made a small, successful effort not to look after her as she left. From his

wastebasket he lifted in the fork of his fingers a wad of heavy mauve notegaper. He

spread it on his desk. It was about his wife and it said, in an engaging hand:

O wrangling schools, that search what fire

Shall burn this world, had none the wit

Unto this knowledge to aspire

That this her fever might be it?

I'm so sorry about Bella, Jack.

Hannibal Lecter

CHAPTER 8

Everett Yow drove a black Buick with a De Paul University sticker on the back

window. His weight gave the Buick a slight list to the left as Clarice Starling followed

him out of Baltimore in the rain. It was almost dark; Starling's day as an investigator was

nearly gone and she didn't have another day to replace it. She dealt with her impatience,

tapping the wheel in time with the wipers as the traffic crawled down Route 301.

Yow was intelligent, fat, and had a breathing problem. Starling guessed his age at

sixty. So far he was accommodating. The lost day was not his fault; returning in the late

afternoon from a week-long business trip to Chicago, the Baltimore lawyer had come

directly from the airport to his office to meet Starling.

Raspail's classic Packard had been stored since long before his death, Yow

explained. It was unlicensed and never driven. Yow had seen it once, covered and in

storage, to confirm its existence for the estate inventory he made shortly after his client's

murder. If Investigator Starling would agree to "frankly disclose at once" anything she

found that might be damaging to his late client's interests, he would show her the

automobile, he said. A warrant and the attendant stir would not be necessary.

Starling was enjoying the use for one day of an FBI motor pool Plymouth with a

cellular telephone, and she had a new ID card provided by Crawford. It simply said

FEDERAL INVESTIGATOR --- and expired in a week, she noticed.

Their destination was Split City Mini-Storage, about four miles past the city

limits. Creeping along with the traffic, Starling used her telephone to find out what she

could about the storage facility. By the time she spotted the high orange sign, SLIT CITY

MINI-STORAGE --- YOU KEEP THE KEY, she had learned a few facts.

Split City had an Interstate Commerce Commission freight-forwarder's license, in

the name of Bernard Gary. A federal grand jury had barely missed Gary for interstate

transportation of stolen goods three years ago, and his license was up for review.

Yow turned in beneath the sign and showed his keys to a spotty young man in

uniform at the gate. The gatekeeper logged their license numbers, opened up and

beckoned impatiently, as though he had more important things to do.

Split City is a bleak place the wind blows through. Like the Sunday divorce flight

from La Guardia to Juárez, it is a service industry to the mindless Brownian movement in

our population; most of its business is storing the sundered chattels of divorce. Its units

are stacked with living room suites, breakfast ensembles, spotted mattresses, toys, and the

photographs of things that didn't work out. It is widely believed among Baltimore County

sheriff's officers that Split City also hides good and valuable consideration from the

bankruptcy courts.

It resembles a military installation: thirty acres of long buildings divided by fire

walls into units the size of a generous single garage, each with its roll-up overhead door.

The rates are reasonable and some of the property has been there for years. Security is

good. The place is surrounded by a double row of high hurricane fence, and dogs patrol

between the fences twenty-four hours a day.

Six inches of sodden leaves, mixed with paper cups and small trash, had banked

against the bottom of the of Raspail's storage unit, number 31. A hefty padlock secured

each side of the door. The left-side hasp also had a seal on it. Everett Yow bent stiffly

over the seal. Starling held the umbrella and a flashlight in the early dark.

"It doesn't appear to have been opened since I was five years ago," he said. "You

see the impression my notary seal here in the plastic. I had no idea at the time that the

relatives would be so contentious and would drag out the probate for so many years."

Yow held the flashlight and umbrella while Starling took a picture of the lock and

seal.

"Mr. Raspail had an office-studio in the city, which I closed down to save the

estate from paying rent," he said. "I had the furnishings brought here and stored them

with Raspail's car and other things that were already here. We brought an upright piano,

books and music, a bed, I think."

Yow tried a key. "The locks may be frozen. At least this one's very stiff." It was

hard for him to bend over and breathe at the same time. When he tried to squat, his knees

creaked.

Starling was glad to see that the padlocks were big chrome American Standards.

They looked formidable, but she knew she could pop the brass cylinders out easily with a

sheet metal screw and a claw hammer--- her father had showed her how burglars do it

when she was a child. The problem would be finding the hammer and screw; she did not

even have the benefit of the resident junk in her Pinto.

She poked through her purse and found the de-icer spray she used on her Pinto's

door locks.

"Want to rest a second in your car, Mr. Yow? Why don't you warm up for a few

minutes and I'll give this a try. Take the umbrella, it's only a drizzle now."

Starling moved the FBI Plymouth up close to the door to use its headlights. She

pulled the dipstick out of the car and dripped oil into the keyholes of the padlocks, then

sprayed in de-icer to thin the oil. Mr. Yow smiled and nodded from his car. Starling was

glad Yow was an intelligent man; she could perform her task without alienating him.

It was dark now. She felt exposed in the glare of the Plymouth's headlights and

the fan belt squealed in her ear as the car idled. She'd locked the car while it was running.

Mr. Yow appeared to be harmless, but she saw no reason to take a chance on being

mashed against the door.

The padlock jumped like a frog in her hand and lay there open, heavy and greasy.

The other lock, having soaked, was easier.

The door would not come up. Starling lifted on the handle until bright spots

danced before her eyes. Yow came to help, but between the small, inadequate door

handle and his hernia, they exerted little additional force.

"We might return next week, with my son, or with some workmen," Mr. Yow

suggested. "I would like very much to go home soon."

Starling was not at all sure she'd ever get back to this place; it would be less

trouble to Crawford if he just picked up the telephone and had the Baltimore field office

handle it. "Mr. Yow, I'll hurry. Do you have a bumper jack in this car?"

With the jack under the handle of the door, Starling used her weight on top of the

lug wrench that served as a jack handle. The door squealed horribly and went up a halfinch. It appeared to be bending upward in the center. The door went up another inch and

another until she could slide the spark tire under it, to hold it up while she moved Mr.

Yow's jack and her own to the sides of the door, placing them under the bottom edge,

close to the tracks the door ran in.

Alternating at the jacks on each side, she inched the door up a foot and a half,

where it jammed solidly and her full weight on the jack handles would not raise it.

Mr. Yow came to peer under the door with her. He could only bend over for a few

seconds at a time.

"It smells like mice in there," he said. "I was assured they used rodent poison

here. I believe it is specified in contract. Rodents are almost unknown, they said. but I

hear them, do you?"

"I hear them," Starling said. With her flashlight, she could pick out cardboard

boxes and one big tire with wide whitewall beneath the edge of a cloth cover. The tire

was flat.

She backed the Plymouth up until part of the headlight pattern shone under the

door, and she took out one of the rubber floor mats.

"You're going in there, Officer Starling?"

"I have to take a look, Mr. Yow."

He took out his handkerchief. "May I suggest you tie your cuffs snugly around

your ankles? To prevent mouse intrusion."

"Thank you, sir, that's a very good idea. Mr. Yow, if the door should come down,

ha ha, or something else should occur, would you be kind enough to call this number? It's

our Baltimore field office. They know I'm here with you right now, and they'll be alarmed

if they don't hear from me in a little while, do you follow me?"

"Yes, of course. Absolutely, I do." He gave her the key to the Packard.

Starling put the rubber. mat on the, wet ground in front of the door and lay down

on it, her hand cupping a pack of plastic evidence bags over the lens of her camera and

her cuffs tied snugly with Yow s handkerchief and her own. A mist of rain fell in her

face, and the smell of mold and mice was strong in her nose. What occurred to Starling

was, absurdly, Latin.

Written on the blackboard by her forensics instructor on her first day in training, it

was the motto of the Roman physician: Primum non nocere. First do no harm.

He didn't say that in a garage full of fucking mice.

And suddenly her father's voice, speaking to her with his hand on her brother's

shoulder, "If you can't play without squawling, Clarice, go on to the house."

Starling fastened the collar button of her blouse, scrunched her shoulders up

around her neck and slid under the door.

She was beneath the rear of the Packard. It was parked close to the left side of the

storage room, almost touching the wall. Cardboard boxes were stacked high on the right

side of the room, filling the space beside the car. Starling wriggled along on her back

until her head was out in the narrow gap left between the car and the boxes. She shined

her flashlight up the cliff face of boxes. Many spiders had spanned the narrow space with

their webs. Orb weavers, mostly, the webs dotted with small shriveled carcasses tightly

bound.

Well, a brown recluse spider is the only kind to worry about, and it wouldn't build

out in the open, Starling said to herself. The rest don't raise much of a welt.

There would be space to stand beside the rear fender. She wriggled around until

she was out from under the car, her face close beside the wide whitewall tire. It was

hatched with dry rot. She could read the words GOODYEAR DOUBLE EAGLE on it.

Careful of her head, she got to her feet in the narrow space, hand before her face to break

the webs. Was this how it felt to wear a veil?

Mr. Yow's voice from outside. "Okay, Miss Starling?„

"Okay," she said. There were small scurryings at the sound of her voice, and,

something inside a piano climbed over a few high notes. The car lights from outside lit

her legs up to the calf.

"So you found the piano, Officer Starling," Mr. Yow called.

"That wasn't me."

"Oh."

The car was big, tall and long. A 1938 Packard limousine, according to Yow's

inventory. It was covered with a rug, the plush side down. She played her flashlight over

it.

"Did you cover the car with this rug, Mr. Yow?"

"I found it that way and I never uncovered it," Yow called under the door. "I can't

deal with a dusty rug. That's the way Raspail had it. I just made sure the car vas there. My

movers put the piano against the wall and covered it and stacked more boxes beside the

car and left. I was paying them by the hour. The boxes are sheet music and books,

mostly."

The rug was thick and heavy and as she tugged at it, dust swarmed in the beam of

her flashlight. She sneezed twice. Standing on tiptoe, she could fold the rug over to the

midline of the tall old car. The curtains were drawn in the back windows. The door

handle was covered with dust. She had to lean forward over cartons to reach it. Touching

only the end of the handle, she tried to turn it downward. Locked. There was no keyhole

in the rear door. She'd have to move a lot of boxes to get to the front door, and there was

damn little place to put them. She could see a small gap between the curtain and the post

of the rear window.

Starling leaned over boxes to put her eye close to the glass and shined her light

through the crack. She could only see her reflection until she cupped her hand on top of

the light. A splinter of the beam, diffused by the dusty glass, moved across the seat. An

album lay open on the seat. The colors were poor in the bad light, but she could see

Valentines pasted on the pages. Lacy old Valentines, fluffy on the page.

"Thanks a lot, Dr. Lecter." When she spoke, her breath stirred the fuzz of dust on

the windowsill and fogged the glass. She didn't want to wipe it, so she had to wait for it to

clear. The light moved on, over a lap rug crumpled on the floor of the car and onto the

dusty wink of a pair of man's patent leather evening shoes. Above the shoes, black socks

and above the socks were tuxedo trousers with legs in them.

Nobody'sbeeninthatdoorinfiveyears--- easy, easy, hold it baby.

"Oh, Mr. Yow. Say, Mr. Yow?"

"Yes, Officer Starling?"

"Mr. Yow, looks like somebody's sitting in this car."

"Oh my. Maybe you better come out, Miss Starling."

"Not quite yet, Mr. Yow. Just wait there, if you will, please."

Now is when it's important to think. Now is more important than all the crap you

tell your pillow for the rest of your life. Suck it up and do this right. I don't want to

destroy evidence. I do want some help. But most of all I don't want to cry wolf. If I

scramble the Baltimore office and the cops out here for nothing, I've had it. I see what

looks like some legs. Mr. Yow would not have brought me here if he'd known there was a

cool one in the car. She managed to smile at herself. "Cool one" was bravado. Nobody's

been here since Yow's last visit. All right, that means the boxes were put here after

whatever's in the car. And that means I can move the boxes without losing anything

important.

"All right, Mr. Yow."

"Yes. Do we have to call the police, or are you sufficient, Officer Starling?"

"I've got to find that out. Just wait right there, please."

The box problem was as maddening as Rubik's Cube. She tried to work with the

flashlight under her arm, dropped it twice, and finally put it on top of the car. She had to

put boxes behind her, and some of the shorter box cartons would slide under the car.

Some kind of bite or splinter made the ball of her thumb itch.

Now she could see through the dusty glass of the front passenger's side window

into the chauffeur's compartment. A spider had spun between the big steering wheel and

the gearshift. The partition between the front and back compartments was closed.

She wished she had thought to oil the Packard key before she came under the

door, but when she stuck it the lock, it worked.

There was hardly room to open the door more than a third of the way in the

narrow passage. It swung against the boxes with a thump that sent the mice scratching

and brought additional notes from the piano. A stale smell of decay and chemical came

out of the car. It jogged her memory in a place she couldn't name.

She leaned inside, opened the partition behind the chauffeur's seat, and shined her

flashlight into the rear compartment of the car. A formal shirt with studs was the bright

thing the light found first, quickly up the shirtfront to the face, no face to see, and down

again, over glittering shirt studs and satin lapels to a lap with zipper open, and up again to

the neat bow tie and the collar, where the white stub neck of a mannequin protruded. But

above the neck, something, else that reflected little light. Cloth, a black hood where the

head should be, big, as though it covered a parrot's cage. Velvet, Starling thought. It sat

on a plywood shelf extending over the neck of the mannequin from the parcel shelf

behind.

She took several pictures from the front seat, focusing with the flashlight and

closing her eyes against the flash of the strobe. Then she straightened up outside the car.

Standing in the dark, wet, with cobwebs on her, she considered what to do.

What she was not going to do was summon the special agent in charge of the

Baltimore field office to look at a mannequin with its fly open and a book of Valentines.

Once she decided to get in the backseat and take the hood off the thing, she didn't

want to think about it very long. She reached through the chauffeur's partition, unlocked

the rear door, and rearranged some boxes to get it open. It all seemed to take a long time.

The smell from the rear compartment was much stronger when she opened the door. She

reached in and, carefully lifting the Valentine album by the corners, moved it onto an

evidence bag on top of the car. She spread another evidence bag on the seat.

The car springs groaned as she got inside and the figure shifted a little when she

sat down beside it. The right hand in its white glove slid off the thigh and lay on the seat.

She touched the glove with her finger. The hand inside was hard. Gingerly she pushed the

glove down from the wrist. The wrist was some white synthetic material. There was a

lump in the trousers that for a silly instant reminded her of certain events in high school.

Small scrambling noises came from under the seat.

Gentle as a caress, her hand touching the hood. The cloth moved easily over

something hard and slick beneath. When she felt the round knob on the top, she knew.

She knew that it was a big laboratory specimen jar and she knew what would be in it.

With dread, but little doubt, she pulled off the cover.

The head inside the jar had been severed neatly close beneath the jaw. It faced

her, the eyes long burned milky by the alcohol that preserved it. The mouth was open and

the tongue protruded slightly, very gray. Over the years, the alcohol had evaporated to the

point that the head rested on the bottom of the jar, its crown protruding through the

surface of the fluid in a cap of decay. Turned at an owlish angle to the body beneath, it

gaped stupidly at Starling. Even in the play of light over the features, it remained dumb

and dead.

Starling, in this moment, examined herself. She was pleased. She was exhilarated.

She wondered for a second if those were worthy feelings. Now, at this moment, sitting in

this old car with a head and some mice, she could think clearly, and she was proud of

that.

"Well, Toto," she said, "we're not in Kansas anymore." She'd always wanted to

say that under stress, but doing it left her feeling phony,, and she was glad nobody had

heard. Work to do.

She sat back gingerly and looked around.

This was somebody's environment, chosen and created, a thousand light-years

across the mind from the traffic crawling down Route 301.

Dried blossoms dropped from the cut-crystal bud vases on the pillars. The

limousine's table was folded down and covered with a linen cloth. On it, a decanter

gleamed through dust. A spider had built between the decanter and the short candlestick

beside it.

She tried to picture Lecter, or someone, sitting here with her present companion

and having a drink and trying to show him the Valentines. And what else? Working

carefully, disturbing the figure as little as possible, she frisked it for identification. There

was none. In a jacket pocket she found the bands of material left over from adjusting the

length of the trousers--- the dinner clothes were probably new when they were put on the

figure.

Starling poked the lump in the trousers. Too hard, even for high school, she

reflected. She spread the fly with her fingers and shined her light inside, on dildo of

polished, inlaid wood. Good-sized one, too. She wondered if she was depraved.

Carefully she turned the jar and examined the sides and back of the head for

wounds. There were none visible. The name of a laboratory supply company was cast in

the glass.

Considering the face again, she believed she learned something that would last

her. Looking with purpose at this face, with its tongue changing color where it touched

the glass, was not as bad as Miggs swallowing his tongue in her dreams. She felt she

could look at anything, if she had something positive to do about it. Starling was young.

----------

In the ten seconds after her WPIK-TV mobile news unit slid to a stop, Jonetta

Johnson put in her earrings, powdered her beautiful brown face, and cased the situation.

She and her news crew, monitoring the Baltimore County police radio, had arrived at

Split City ahead of the patrol cars.

All the news crew saw in their headlights was Clarice Starling, standing in front

of the garage door with her flashlight and her little laminated ID card, her hair plastered

down by the drizzle.

Jonetta Johnson could spot a rookie every time. She climbed out with the camera

crew behind her and approached Starling. The bright lights came on.

Mr. Yow sank so far down in his Buick that only his hat was visible above the

window sill.

"Jonetta Johnson, WPIK news, did you report a homicide?"

Starling did not look like very much law and she knew it. "I'm a federal officer,

this is a crime scene. I have to secure it until the Baltimore authorities---"

The assistant cameraman had grabbed the bottom of the garage door and was

trying to lift it.

"Hold it," Starling said. "I'm talking to you, sir. Hold it. Back off, please. I'm not

kidding with you. Help me out here." She wished hard for a badge, a uniform, anything.

"Okay, Harry," the newswoman said. "Ah, officer, we want to cooperate in every

way. Frankly, this crew costs money and I just want to know whether to even keep them

here until the other authorities arrive. Will you tell me if there's a body in there? Camera's

off, just between us. Tell me and we'll wait. We'll be good, I promise. How about it?"

"I'd wait if I were you," Starling said.

"Thanks, you won't be sorry," Jonetta Johnson said. "Look, I've got some

information on Split City Mini-Storage that you could probably use. Would you shine

your light on the clipboard? Let's see if I can find it here."

"WEYE mobile unit just turned in at the gate, Joney," the man, Harry, said.

"Let's see if I can find it here, Officer, here it is. There was a scandal about two

years ago when they tried to prove this place was trucking and storing--- was it

fireworks?" Jonetta Johnson glanced over Starling's shoulder once too often.

Starling turned to see the cameraman on his back, his head and shoulders in the

garage, the assistant squatting beside him, ready to pass the minicam under the door.

"Hey!" Starling said. She dropped to her knees on the wet ground beside him and

tugged at his shirt. "You can't go in there. Hey! I told you not to do that."

And all the time the men were talking to her, constantly, gently. "We won't touch

anything. We're pros, you don't have to worry. The cops will let us in anyway. It's all

right, honey."

Their cozening backseat manner put her over.

She ran to a bumper jack at the end of the door and pumped the handle: The door

came down two inches, with a grinding screech. She pumped it again. Now the door was

touching the man's chest. When he didn't come out, she pulled the handle out of the

socket and carried it back to the prone cameraman. There were other bright television

lights now, and in the glare of them she banged the door above him hard with the jack

handle, showering dust and rust down on him.

"Give me your attention," she said. "You don't listen, do you? Come out of there.

Now. You're one second from arrest for obstruction of justice."

"Take it easy," the assistant said. He put his hand on her. She turned on him.

There were shouted questions from behind the glare and she heard sirens.

"Hands off and back off, buster." She stood on the cameraman's ankle and faced

the assistant, the jack handle hanging by her side. She did not raise the jack handle. It was

just as well. She looked bad enough on television as it was.

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