The Silence of the Lambs, Page 6

  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 drooped 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 a 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.

  CHAPTER 9

  The odors of the violent ward seemed more intense in the semidarkness. A TV set playing without sound in the corridor threw Starling’s shadow on the bars of Dr. Lecter’s cage.

  She could not see into the dark behind the bars, but she didn’t ask the orderly to turn up the lights from his station. The whole ward would light at once and she knew the Baltimore County police had had the lights full on for hours while they shouted questions at Lecter. He had refused to speak, but responded by folding for them an origami chicken that pecked when the tail was manipulated up and down. The senior officer, furious, had crushed the chicken in the lobby ashtray as he gestured for Starling to go in.

  “Dr. Lecter?” She heard her own breathing, and breathing down the hall, but from Miggs’ empty cell, no breathing. Miggs’ cell was vastly empty. She felt its silence like a draft.

  Starling knew Lecter was watching her from the darkness. Two minutes passed. Her legs and back ached from her struggle with the garage door, and her clothes were damp. She sat on her coat on the floor, well back from the bars, her feet tucked under her, and lifted her wet, bedraggled hair over her collar to get it off her neck.

  Behind her on the TV screen, an evangelist waved his arms.

  “Dr. Lecter, we both know what this is. They think you’ll talk to me.”

  Silence. Down the hall, someone whistled “Over the Sea to Skye.”

  After five minutes, she said, “It was strange going in there. Sometime I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  Starling jumped when the food carrier rolled out of Lecter’s cell. There was a clean, folded towel in the tray. She hadn’t heard him move.

  She looked at it and, with a sense of falling, took it and toweled her hair. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Why don’t you ask me about Buffalo Bill?” His voice was close, at her level. He must be sitting on the floor too.

  “Do you know something about him?”

  “I might if I saw the case.”

  “I don’t have that case,” Starling said.

  “You won’t have this one, either, when they’re through using you.”

  “I know.”

  “You could get the files on Buffalo Bill. The reports and the pictures. I’d like to see it.”

  I’ll bet you would. “Dr. Lecter, you started this. Now please tell me about the person in the Packard.”

  “You found an entire person? Odd. I only saw a head. Where do you suppose the rest came from?”

  “All right. Whose head was it?”

  “What can you tell?”

  “They’ve only done the preliminary stuff. White male, about twenty-seve
n, both American and European dentistry. Who was he?”

  “Raspail’s lover. Raspail, of the gluey flute.”

  “What were the circumstances—how did he die?”

  “Circumlocution, Officer Starling?”

  “No, I’ll ask it later.”

  “Let me save you some time. I didn’t do it; Raspail did. Raspail liked sailors. This was a Scandinavian one named Klaus something. Raspail never told me the last name.”

  Dr. Lecter’s voice moved lower. Maybe he was lying on the floor, Starling thought.

  “Klaus was off a Swedish boat in San Diego. Raspail was out there teaching for a summer at the conservatory. He went berserk over the young man. The Swede saw a good thing and jumped his boat. They bought some kind of awful camper and sylphed through the woods naked. Raspail said the young man was unfaithful and he strangled him.”

  “Raspail told you this?”

  “Oh yes, under the confidential seal of therapy sessions. I think it was a lie. Raspail always embellished the facts. He wanted to seem dangerous and romantic. The Swede probably died in some banal erotic asphyxia transaction. Raspail was too flabby and weak to have strangled him. Notice how closely Klaus was trimmed under the jaw? Probably to remove a high ligature mark from hanging.”

  “I see.”

  “Raspail’s dream of happiness was ruined. He put Klaus’ head in a bowling bag and came back East.”

  “What did he do with the rest?”

  “Buried it in the hills.”

  “He showed you the head in the car?”

  “Oh yes, in the course of therapy he came to feel he could tell me anything. He went out to sit with Klaus quite often and showed him the Valentines.”

  “And then Raspail himself … died. Why?”

  “Frankly, I got sick and tired of his whining. Best thing for him, really. Therapy wasn’t going anywhere. I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they’d like to refer to me. I’ve never discussed this before, and now I’m getting bored with it.”

  “And your dinner for the orchestra officials.”

  “Haven’t you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what’s in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?”

  “Yes. I think I’ll just call you—”

  “Dr. Lecter—that seems most appropriate to your age and station,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “How did you feel when you went into the garage?”

  “Apprehensive.”

  “Why?”

  “Mice and insects.”

  “Do you have something you use when you want to get up your nerve?” Dr. Lecter asked.

  “Nothing I know of that works, except wanting what I’m after.”

  “Do memories or tableaux occur to you then, whether you try for them or not?”

  “Maybe. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Things from your early life.”

  “I’ll have to watch and see.”

  “How did you feel when you heard about my late neighbor, Miggs? You haven’t asked me about it.”

  “I was getting to it.”

  “Weren’t you glad when you heard?”

  “No.”

  “Were you sad?”

  “No. Did you talk him into it?”

  Dr. Lecter laughed quietly. “Are you asking me, Officer Starling, if I suborned Mr. Miggs’ felony suicide? Don’t be silly. It has a certain pleasant symmetry, though, his swallowing that offensive tongue, don’t you agree?”

  “No.”

  “Officer Starling, that was a lie. The first one you’ve told me. A triste occasion, Truman would say.”

  “President Truman?”

  “Never mind. Why do you think I helped you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jack Crawford likes you, doesn’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s probably untrue. Would you like for him to like you? Tell me, do you feel an urge to please him and does it worry you? Are you wary of your urge to please him?”

  “Everyone wants to be liked, Dr. Lecter.”

  “Not everyone. Do you think Jack Crawford wants you sexually? I’m sure he’s very frustrated now. Do you think he visualizes … scenarios, transactions … fucking with you?”

  “That’s not a matter of curiosity to me, Dr. Lecter, and it’s the sort of thing Miggs would ask.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Did you suggest to him that he swallow his tongue?”

  “Your interrogative case often has that proper subjunctive in it. With your accent, it stinks of the lamp. Crawford clearly likes you and believes you competent. Surely the odd confluence of events hasn’t escaped you, Clarice—you’ve had Crawford’s help and you’ve had mine. You say you don’t know why Crawford helps you—do you know why I did?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Do you think it’s because I like to look at you and think about eating you up—about how you would taste?”

  “Is that it?”

  “No. I want something Crawford can give me and I want to trade him for it. But he won’t come to see me. He won’t ask for my help with Buffalo Bill, even though he knows it means more young women will die.”

  “I can’t believe that, Dr. Lecter.”

  “I only want something very simple, and he could get it.” Lecter turned up the rheostat slowly in his cell. His books and drawings were gone. His toilet seat was gone. Chilton had stripped the cell to punish him for Miggs.

  “I’ve been in this room eight years, Clarice. I know that they will never, ever let me out while I’m alive. What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water.”

  “Has your attorney petitioned—”

  “Chilton put that television in the hall, set to a religious channel. As soon as you leave the orderly will turn the sound back up, and my attorney can’t stop it, the way the court is inclined toward me now. I want to be in a federal institution and I want my books back and a view. I’ll give good value for it. Crawford could do that. Ask him.”

  “I can tell him what you’ve said.”

  “He’ll ignore it. And Buffalo Bill will go on and on. Wait until he scalps one and see how you like it. Ummmm … I’ll tell you one thing about Buffalo Bill without ever seeing the case, and years from now when they catch him, if they ever do, you’ll see that I was right and I could have helped. I could have saved lives. Clarice?”

  “Yes?”

  “Buffalo Bill has a two-story house,” Dr. Lecter said, and turned out his light.

  He would not speak again.

  CHAPTER 10

  Clarice Starling leaned against a dice table in the FBI’s casino and tried to pay attention to a lecture on money-laundering in gambling. It had been thirty-six hours since the Baltimore County police took her deposition (via a chain-smoking two-finger typist: “See if you can get that window open if the smoke bothers you.”) and dismissed her from its jurisdiction with a reminder that murder is not a federal crime.

  The network news on Sunday night showed Starling’s scrap with the television cameramen and she felt sure she was deep in the glue. Through it all, no word from Crawford or from the Baltimore field office. It was as though she had dropped her report down a hole.

  The casino where she now stood was small—it had operated in a moving trailer truck until the FBI seized it and installed it in the school as a teaching aid. The narrow room was crowded with police from many jurisdictions; Starling had declined with thanks the chairs of two Texas Rangers and a Scotland Yard detective.

  The rest of her class were down the hall in the Academy building, searching for hairs in the genuine motel carpet of the “Sex-Crime Bedroom” and dusting the “Anytown Bank” for fingerprints. Starling had spent so many hours on searches and fingerprints as a Forensic Fellow that she was sent instead to this lecture, part of a series for visiting lawmen.

  She wondered if there was another reason she had been sepa
rated from the class: maybe they isolate you before you get the ax.

  Starling rested her elbows on the pass line of the dice table and tried to concentrate on money-laundering in gambling. What she thought about instead was how much the FBI hates to see its agents on television, outside of official news conferences.

  Dr. Hannibal Lecter was catnip to the media, and the Baltimore police had happily supplied Starling’s name to reporters. Over and over she saw herself on the Sunday-night network news. There was “Starling of the FBI” in Baltimore, banging the jack handle against the garage door as the cameraman tried to slither under it. And here was “Federal Agent Starling” turning on the assistant with the jack handle in her hand.

  On the rival network, station WPIK, lacking film of its own, had announced a personal-injury lawsuit against “Starling of the FBI” and the Bureau itself because the cameraman got dirt and rust particles in his eyes when Starling banged the door.

  Jonetta Johnson of WPIK was on coast-to-coast with the revelation that Starling had found the remains in the garage through an “eerie bonding with a man authorities have branded … a monster!” Clearly, WPIK had a source at the hospital.

  BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN!! screamed the National Tattler from its supermarket racks.

  There was no public comment from the FBI, but there was plenty inside the Bureau, Starling was sure.

  At breakfast, one of her classmates, a young man who wore a lot of Canoe after-shave, had referred to Starling as “Melvin Pelvis,” a stupid play on the name of Melvin Purvis, Hoover’s number-one G-man in the thirties. What Ardelia Mapp said to the young man made his face turn white, and he left his breakfast uneaten on the table.

  Now Starling found herself in a curious state in which she could not be surprised. For a day and a night she’d felt suspended in a diver’s ringing silence. She intended to defend herself, if she got the chance.

  The lecturer spun the roulette wheel as he talked, but he never let the ball drop. Looking at him, Starling was convinced that he had never let the ball drop in his life. He was saying something now: “Clarice Starling.” Why was he saying “Clarice Starling?” That’s me.

  “Yes,” she said.