Red Dragon, Page 7

  “When I looked at him again, maybe my face changed, I don’t know. I knew it and he knew I knew it. I still couldn’t think of the reason, though. I didn’t trust it. I had to figure it out. So I mumbled something and got out of there, into the hall. There was a pay phone in the hall. I didn’t want to stir him up until I had some help. I was talking to the police switchboard when he came out a service door behind me in his socks. I never heard him coming. I felt his breath was all, and then . . . there was the rest of it.”

  “How did you know, though?”

  “I think it was maybe a week later in the hospital I finally figured it out. It was Wound Man—an illustration they used in a lot of the early medical books like the ones Lecter had. It shows different kinds of battle injuries, all in one figure. I had seen it in a survey course a pathologist was teaching at GWU. This sixth victim’s position and his injuries were a close match to Wound Man.”

  “Wound Man, you say? That’s all you had?”

  “Well, yeah. It was a coincidence that I had seen it. A piece of luck.”

  “That’s some luck.”

  “If you don’t believe me, what the fuck did you ask me for?”

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Good. I didn’t mean to say it. That’s the way it happened, though.”

  “Okay,” Springfield said. “Okay. Thank you for telling me. I need to know things like that.”

  Parsons’s description of the man in the alley and the information on the cat and the dog were possible indications of the killer’s methods: It seemed likely that he scouted as a meter reader and felt compelled to hurt the victims’ pets before he came to kill the family.

  The immediate problem the police faced was whether or not to publicize their theory.

  With the public aware of the danger signals and watching, police might get advance warning of the killer’s next attack—but the killer probably followed the news too.

  He might change his habits.

  There was strong feeling in the police department that the slender leads should be kept secret except for a special bulletin to veterinarians and animal shelters throughout the Southeast asking for immediate reports on pet mutilations.

  That meant not giving the public the best possible warning. It was a moral question, and the police were not comfortable with it.

  They consulted Dr. Alan Bloom in Chicago. Dr. Bloom said that if the killer read a warning in the newspapers, he would probably change his method of casing a house. Dr. Bloom doubted that the man could stop attacking the pets, regardless of the risk. The psychiatrist told the police that they should by no means assume they had twenty-five days to work—the period before the next full moon on August 25.

  On the morning of July 31, three hours after Parsons gave his description, a decision was reached in a telephone conference among Birmingham and Atlanta police and Crawford in Washington: They would send the private bulletin to veterinarians, canvass for three days in the neighborhood with the artist’s sketch, then release the information to the news media.

  For those three days Graham and the Atlanta detectives pounded the sidewalks showing the sketch to householders in the area of the Leeds home. There was only a suggestion of a face in the sketch, but they hoped to find someone who could improve it.

  Graham’s copy of the sketch grew soft around the edges from the sweat of his hands. Often it was difficult to get residents to answer the door. At night he lay in his room with powder on his heat rash, his mind circling the problem as though it were a hologram. He courted the feeling that precedes an idea. It would not come.

  Meanwhile, there were four accidental injuries and one fatality in Atlanta as householders shot at relatives coming home late. Prowler calls multiplied and useless tips stacked up in the In baskets at police headquarters. Despair went around like the flu.

  Crawford returned from Washington at the end of the third day and dropped in on Graham as he sat peeling off his wet socks.

  “Hot work?”

  “Grab a sketch in the morning and see,” Graham said.

  “No, it’ll all be on the news tonight. Did you walk all day?”

  “I can’t drive through their yards.”

  “I didn’t think anything would come of this canvass,” Crawford said.

  “Well, what the hell did you expect me to do?”

  “The best you can, that’s all.” Crawford rose to leave. “Busywork’s been a narcotic for me sometimes, especially after I quit the booze. For you too, I think.”

  Graham was angry. Crawford was right, of course.

  Graham was a natural procrastinator, and he knew it. Long ago in school he had made up for it with speed. He was not in school now.

  There was something else he could do, and he had known it for days. He could wait until he was driven to it by desperation in the last days before the full moon. Or he could do it now, while it might be of some use.

  There was an opinion he wanted. A very strange view he needed to share; a mindset he had to recover after his warm round years in the Keys.

  The reasons clacked like roller-coaster cogs pulling up to the first long plunge, and at the top, unaware that he clutched his belly, Graham said it aloud.

  “I have to see Lecter.”

  7

  Dr. Frederick Chilton, chief of staff at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, came around his desk to shake Will Graham’s hand.

  “Dr. Bloom called me yesterday, Mr. Graham—or should I call you Dr. Graham?”

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I was delighted to hear from Dr. Bloom, we’ve known each other for years. Take that chair.”

  “We appreciate your help, Dr. Chilton.”

  “Frankly, I sometimes feel like Lecter’s secretary rather than his keeper,” Chilton said. “The volume of his mail alone is a nuisance. I think among some researchers it’s considered chic to correspond with him—I’ve seen his letters framed in psychology departments—and for a while it seemed that every Ph.D. candidate in the field wanted to interview him. Glad to cooperate with you, of course, and Dr. Bloom.”

  “I need to see Dr. Lecter in as much privacy as possible,” Graham said. “I may need to see him again or telephone him after today.”

  Chilton nodded. “To begin with, Dr. Lecter will stay in his room. That is absolutely the only place where he is not put in restraints. One wall of his room is a double barrier which opens on the hall. I’ll have a chair put there, and screens if you like.

  “I must ask you not to pass him any objects whatever, other than paper free of clips or staples. No ring binders, pencils, or pens. He has his own felt-tipped pens.”

  “I might have to show him some material that could stimulate him,” Graham said.

  “You can show him what you like as long as it’s on soft paper. Pass him documents through the sliding food tray. Don’t hand anything through the barrier and do not accept anything he might extend through the barrier. He can return papers in the food tray. I insist on that. Dr. Bloom and Mr. Crawford assured me that you would cooperate on procedure.”

  “I will,” Graham said. He started to rise.

  “I know you’re anxious to get on with it, Mr. Graham, but I want to tell you something first. This will interest you.

  “It may seem gratuitous to warn you, of all people, about Lecter. But he’s very disarming. For a year after he was brought here, he behaved perfectly and gave the appearance of cooperating with attempts at therapy. As a result—this was under the previous administrator—security around him was slightly relaxed.

  “On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, he complained of chest pain. His restraints were removed in the examining room to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. One of his attendants left the room to smoke, and the other turned away for a second. The nurse was very quick and strong. She managed to save one of her eyes.

  “You may find this curious.” Chilton took a strip of EKG tape from a drawer and unrolled it on
his desk. He traced the spiky line with his forefinger. “Here, he’s resting on the examining table. Pulse seventy-two. Here, he grabs the nurse’s head and pulls her down to him. Here, he is subdued by the attendant. He didn’t resist, by the way, though the attendant dislocated his shoulder. Do you notice the strange thing? His pulse never got over eighty-five. Even when he tore out her tongue.”

  Chilton could read nothing in Graham’s face. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. His hands were dry and shiny.

  “You know, when Lecter was first captured we thought he might provide us with a singular opportunity to study a pure sociopath,” Chilton said. “It’s so rare to get one alive. Lecter is so lucid, so perceptive; he’s trained in psychiatry . . . and he’s a mass murderer. He seemed cooperative, and we thought that he could be a window on this kind of aberration. We thought we’d be like Beaumont studying digestion through the opening in St. Martin’s stomach.

  “As it turned out, I don’t think we’re any closer to understanding him now than the day he came in. Have you ever talked with Lecter for any length of time?”

  “No. I just saw him when . . . I saw him mainly in court. Dr. Bloom showed me his articles in the journals,” Graham said.

  “He’s very familiar with you. He’s given you a lot of thought.”

  “You had some sessions with him?”

  “Yes. Twelve. He’s impenetrable. Too sophisticated about the tests for them to register anything. Edwards, Fabré, even Dr. Bloom himself had a crack at him. I have their notes. He was an enigma to them too. It’s impossible, of course, to tell what he’s holding back or whether he understands more than he’ll say. Oh, since his commitment he’s done some brilliant pieces for The American Journal of Psychiatry and The General Archives. But they’re always about problems he doesn’t have. I think he’s afraid that if we ‘solve’ him, nobody will be interested in him anymore and he’ll be stuck in a back ward somewhere for the rest of his life.”

  Chilton paused. He had practiced using his peripheral vision to watch his subject in interviews. He believed that he could watch Graham this way undetected.

  “The consensus around here is that the only person who has demonstrated any practical understanding of Hannibal Lecter is you, Mr. Graham. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “Some of the staff are curious about this: When you saw Dr. Lecter’s murders, their ‘style,’ so to speak, were you able perhaps to reconstruct his fantasies? And did that help you identify him?”

  Graham did not answer.

  “We’re woefully short of material on that sort of thing. There’s one single piece in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Would you mind talking with some of the staff—no, no, not this trip—Dr. Bloom was very severe with me on that point. We’re to leave you alone. Next trip, perhaps.”

  Dr. Chilton had seen a lot of hostility. He was seeing some at the moment.

  Graham stood up. “Thank you, Doctor. I want to see Lecter now.”

  The steel door of the maximum-security section closed behind Graham. He heard the bolt slide home.

  Graham knew that Lecter slept most of the morning. He looked down the corridor. At that angle he could not see into Lecter’s cell, but he could tell that the lights inside were dimmed.

  Graham wanted to see Dr. Lecter asleep. He wanted time to brace himself. If he felt Lecter’s madness in his head, he had to contain it quickly, like a spill.

  To cover the sound of his footsteps, he followed an orderly pushing a linen cart. Dr. Lecter is very difficult to slip up on.

  Graham paused partway down the hall. Steel bars covered the entire front of the cell. Behind the bars, farther than arm’s reach, was a stout nylon net stretched ceiling to floor and wall to wall. Through the barrier, Graham could see a table and chair bolted to the floor. The table was stacked with softcover books and correspondence. He walked up to the bars, put his hands on them, took his hands away.

  Dr. Hannibal Lecter lay on his cot asleep, his head propped on a pillow against the wall. Alexandre Dumas’s Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was open on his chest.

  Graham had stared through the bars for about five seconds when Lecter opened his eyes and said, “That’s the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court.”

  “I keep getting it for Christmas.”

  Dr. Lecter’s eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points. Graham felt each hair bristle on his nape. He put his hand on the back of his neck.

  “Christmas, yes,” Lecter said. “Did you get my card?”

  “I got it. Thank you.”

  Dr. Lecter’s Christmas card had been forwarded to Graham from the FBI crime laboratory in Washington. He took it into the backyard, burned it, and washed his hands before touching Molly.

  Lecter rose and walked over to his table. He is a small, lithe man. Very neat. “Why don’t you have a seat, Will? I think there are some folding chairs in a closet just down that way. At least, that’s where it sounds like they come from.”

  “The orderly’s bringing one.”

  Lecter stood until Graham was seated in the hall. “And how is Officer Stewart?” he asked.

  “Stewart’s fine.” Officer Stewart left law enforcement after he saw Dr. Lecter’s basement. He managed a motel now. Graham did not mention this. He didn’t think Stewart would appreciate any mail from Lecter.

  “Unfortunate that his emotional problems got the better of him. I thought he was a very promising young officer. Do you ever have any problems, Will?”

  “No.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  Graham felt that Lecter was looking through to the back of his skull. His attention felt like a fly walking around in there.

  “I’m glad you came. It’s been what now, three years? My callers are all professional. Banal clinical psychiatrists and grasping second-rate doctors of psychology from silo colleges somewhere. Pencil lickers trying to protect their tenure with pieces in the journals.”

  “Dr. Bloom showed me your article on surgical addiction in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.”

  “And?”

  “Very interesting, even to a layman.”

  “A layman . . . layman—layman. Interesting term,” Lecter said. “So many learned fellows going about. So many experts on government grants. And you say you’re a layman. But it was you who caught me, wasn’t it, Will? Do you know how you did it?”

  “I’m sure you’ve read the transcript. It’s all in there.”

  “No it’s not. Do you know how you did it, Will?”

  “It’s in the transcript. What does it matter now?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, Will.”

  “I want you to help me, Dr. Lecter.”

  “Yes, I thought so.”

  “It’s about Atlanta and Birmingham.”

  “Yes.”

  “You read about it, I’m sure.”

  “I’ve read the papers. I can’t clip them. They won’t let me have scissors, of course. Sometimes they threaten me with loss of books, you know. I wouldn’t want them to think I was dwelling on anything morbid.” He laughed. Dr. Lecter has small white teeth. “You want to know how he’s choosing them, don’t you?”

  “I thought you would have some ideas. I’m asking you to tell me what they are.”

  “Why should I?”

  Graham had anticipated the question. A reason to stop multiple murders would not occur readily to Dr. Lecter.

  “There are things you don’t have,” Graham said. “Research materials, filmstrips even. I’d speak to the chief of staff.”

  “Chilton. You must have seen him when you came in. Gruesome, isn’t it? Tell me the truth, he fumbles at your head like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle, doesn’t he? Watched you out of the corner of his eye. Picked that up, didn’t you? You may not believe this, but he actually tried to give me a Thematic Apperception Test. He was sitting there just like the Cheshire cat waiting for Mf 1
3 to come up. Ha. Forgive me, I forget that you’re not among the anointed. It’s a card with a woman in bed and a man in the foreground. I was supposed to avoid a sexual interpretation. I laughed. He puffed up and told everybody I avoided prison with a Ganser syndrome—never mind, it’s boring.”

  “You’d have access to the AMA filmstrip library.”

  “I don’t think you’d get me the things I want.”

  “Try me.”

  “I have quite enough to read as it is.”

  “You’d get to see the file on this case. There’s another reason.”

  “Pray.”

  “I thought you might be curious to find out if you’re smarter than the person I’m looking for.”

  “Then, by implication, you think you are smarter than I am, since you caught me.”

  “No. I know I’m not smarter than you are.”

  “Then how did you catch me, Will?”

  “You had disadvantages.”

  “What disadvantages?”

  “Passion. And you’re insane.”

  “You’re very tan, Will.”

  Graham did not answer.

  “Your hands are rough. They don’t look like a cop’s hands anymore. That shaving lotion is something a child would select. It has a ship on the bottle, doesn’t it?” Dr. Lecter seldom holds his head upright. He tilts it as he asks a question, as though he were screwing an auger of curiosity into your face. Another silence, and Lecter said, “Don’t think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

  “I don’t think I’ll persuade you. You’ll do it or you won’t. Dr. Bloom is working on it anyway, and he’s the most—”

  “Do you have the file with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me have them, and I might consider it.”

  “No.”

  “Do you dream much, Will?”

  “Good-bye, Dr. Lecter.”

  “You haven’t threatened to take away my books yet.”