"But you got it, you figured it out."
"Yep. Just now." He stopped at a mesh cage. "First let me show you a moth like the one you brought in Monday. This is not exactly the same as yours, but the same family, an owlet." The beam of his flashlight found the large sheeny blue moth sitting on a small branch, its wings folded, Pilcher blew air at it and instantly the fierce face of an owl appeared as the moth flared the undersides of its wings at them, the eye-spots on the wings glaring like the last sight a rat ever sees. "This one's Caligo beltrao-- fairly common. But with this Klaus specimen, you're talking some heavy moths. Come on."
At the end of the room was a case set back in a niche with a rail in front of it. The case was beyond the reach of children and it was covered with a cloth. A small humidifier hummed beside it.
"We keep it behind glass to protect people's fingers-- it can fight. It likes the damp too, and glass keeps the humidity in." Pilcher lifted the cage carefully by its handles and moved it to the front of the niche. He lifted off the cover and turned on a small light above the cage.
"This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on-- we're hoping she'll lay."
The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes.
"Acherontia styx," Pitcher said. "It's named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time-- did I read that?"
"Yes," Starling said. "Is it rare?"
"In this part of the world it is. There aren't any at all in nature." -.
"Where's it from?" Starling leaned her face close to the mesh roof of the case. Her breath stirred the fur on the moth's back. She jerked back when it squeaked and fiercely flapped its wings. She could feel the tiny breeze it made.
" Malaysia. There's a European type too, called atropos, but this one and the one in Klaus' mouth are Malaysian."
"So somebody raised it."
Pilcher nodded. "Yes," he said when she didn't look at him. "It had to be shipped from Malaysia as an egg or more likely as a pupa. Nobody's ever been able to get them to lay eggs in captivity. They mate, but no eggs. The hard part is finding the caterpillar in the jungle. After that, they're not hard to raise."
"You said they can fight."
"The proboscis is sharp and stout, and they'll jam it in your finger if you fool with them. It's an unusual weapon and alcohol doesn't affect it in preserved specimens. That helped us narrow the field so we could identify it so fast." Pilcher seemed suddenly embarrassed, as though he had boasted. "They're tough too," he hurried on to say. "They go in beehives and Bogart honey. One time we were collecting in Sabah, Borneo, and they'd come to the light behind the youth hostel. It was weird to hear them, we'd be--"
"Where did this one come from?"
"A swap with the Malaysian government. I don't know what we traded. It was funny, there we were in the dark, waiting with this cyanide bucket, when--"
"What kind of customs declaration came with this one? Do you have records of that? Do they have to be cleared out of Malaysia? Who would have that?"
"You're in a hurry. Look, I've written down all the stuff we have and the places to put ads if you want to do that kind of thing. Come on, I'll take you out."
They crossed the vast floor in silence. In the light of the elevator, Starling could see that Pilcher was as tired as she was.
"You stayed up with this," she said. "That was a good thing to do. I didn't mean to be abrupt before, I just--"
"I hope they get him. I hope you're through with this soon," he said. "I put down a couple of chemicals he might be buying if he's putting up soft specimens… Officer Starling, I'd like to get to know you."
"Maybe I should call you when I can."
"You definitely should, absolutely, I'd like that, " Pilcher said.
The elevator closed and Pitcher and Starling were gone. The floor devoted to man was still and no human figure moved, not the tattooed, not the mummified, the bound feet didn't stir.
The fire lights glowed red in the Insect Zoo, reflected in ten thousand active eyes of the older phylum. The humidifier hummed and hissed. Beneath the cover, in the black cage, the Death's-head Moth climbed down the nightshade. She moved across the floor, her wings trailing like a cape, and found the bit of honeycomb in her dish. Grasping the honeycomb in her powerful front legs, she uncoiled her sharp proboscis and plunged it through the wax cap of a honey cell. Now she sat sucking quietly while all around her in the dark the chirps and whirs resumed, and with them the tiny tillings and killings.
CHAPTER 41
Catherine Baker Martin down in the hateful dark. Dark swarmed behind her eyelids and, in jerky seconds of sleep, she dreamed the dark came into her. Dark came insidious, up her nose and into her ears, damp fingers of dark proposed themselves to each of her body openings. She put her hand over her mouth and nose, put her other hand over her vagina, clenched her buttocks, turned one ear to the mattress and sacrificed the other ear to the intrusion of the dark. With the dark came a sound, and she jerked awake. A familiar busy sound, a sewing machine. Variable speed. Slow, now fast.
Up in the basement the lights were on-- she could see a feeble disc of yellow high above her where the small hatch in the well lid stood open. The poodle barked a couple of times and the unearthly voice was talking to it, muffled.
Sewing. Sewing was so wrong down here. Sewing belongs to the light. The sunny sewing room of Catherine's childhood flashed so welcome in her mind… the housekeeper, dear Bea Love, at the machine… her little cat batted at the blowing curtain.
The voice blew it all away, fussing at the poodle.
"Precious, put that down. You'll stick yourself with a pin and then where will we be? I'm almost done. Yes, Darlingheart. You get a Chew-wy when we get through-y, you get a Chew-wy doody doody doo. "
Catherine did not know how long she had been captive. She knew that she had washed twice-- the last time she had stood up in the light, wanting him to see her body, not sure if he was looking down from behind the blinding light. Catherine Baker Martin naked was a show-stopper, a girl and a half in all directions, and she knew it. She wanted him to see. She wanted out of the pit. Close enough to fuck is close enough to fight-- she said it silently to herself over and over as she washed. She was getting very little to eat and she knew she'd better do it while she had her strength. She knew she would fight him. She knew she could fight. Would it be better to fuck him first, fuck him as many times as he could do it and wear him out? She knew if she could ever get her legs around his neck she could send him home to Jesus in about a second and a half. Can I stand to do that? You're damned right I can. Balls and eyes, balls and eyes, ballsandeyes. But there had been no sound from above as she finished washing and put an the fresh jumpsuit. There was no reply to her offers as the bath bucket swayed up on its flimsy string and was replaced by her toilet bucket.
She waited now, hours later, listening to the sewing machine. She did not call out to him. In time, maybe a thousand breaths, she heard him going up the stairs, talking to the dog, saying something, "--breakfast when I get back." He left the basement light on. Sometimes he did that.
Toenails and footsteps on the kitchen floor above. The dog whining. She believed her captor was leaving. Sometimes he went away for a long time.
Breaths went by. The little dog walked around in the kitchen above, whining, rattling something along the floor, bonging something along the floor, maybe its bowl. Scratching, scratching above. And barking again, short sharp barks, this time not as clear as the sounds had been when the dog was above her in the kitchen. Because the little dog was not in the kitchen. It had nosed the door open and it was down in the basement chasing mice, as it had done before when he was out.
Down in the dark, Catherine Martin felt beneath her mattress. She found the piece of chicken bone and sniffed it. It was hard not to eat the little shreds of meat and gristle on it. She put it in her mouth to get it warm. She stood up now, swaying a little in the dizzy dark. With her in the sheer pit was nothing but her futon, the jumpsuit she was wearing, the plastic toilet bucket and its flimsy cotton string stretching upward toward the pale yellow light.
She had thought about it in every interval when she could think. Catherine stretched as high as she could and grasped the string. Better to jerk or to pull? She had thought about it through thousands of breaths. Better to pull steadily.
The cotton string stretched more than she expected. She got a new grip as high as she could and pulled, swinging her arm from side to side, hoping the string was fraying where it passed over the wooden lip of the opening above her. She frayed until her shoulder ached. She pulled, the string stretching, now not stretching, no more stretch. Please break high. Pop, and it fell, hanks of it across her face.
Squatting on the floor, the string lying on her head and shoulder, net enough light from the hole far above to see the string piled on her. She didn't know how much she had. Must not tangle. Carefully she laid the string out on the floor in bights, measuring them on her forearm. She counted fourteen forearms. The string had broken at the lip of the well.
She tied the chicken bone with its shredded morsels of flesh securely into the line where it attached to the bucket handle.
Now the harder part.
Work carefully. She was in her heavy-weather mind-set. It was like taking care of yourself in a small boat in heavy weather.
She tied the broken end of the string to her wrist, tightening the knot wjth her teeth.
She stood as clear of the string as possible. Holding the bucket by the handle, she swung it in a big circle and threw it straight upward at the faint disc of light above her. The plastic bucket missed the open hatch, hit the underside of the lid and fell back, hitting her in the face and shoulder. The little dog barked louder.
She took the time to lay out the line and threw again, and again. On.the third throw, the bucket hit her broken finger when it fell and she had to lean against the in-sloping wall and breathe until the nausea went away. Throw four banged down on her, but five did not. It was out. The bucket was somewhere on the wooden cover of the well beside the open trap. How far from the hole? Get steady. Gently she pulled. She twitched the string to hear the bucket handle rattle against the wood above her.
The little-dog barked louder.
She mustn't pull the bucket over the edge of the hole, but she must pull it dose. She pulled it dose.
The little dog among the mirrors and the mannequins in a nearby basement room. Sniffing at the threads and shreds beneath the sewing machine. Nosing around the great black armoire. Looking toward the end of the basement where the sounds were coming from. Dashing toward the gloomy section to bark and dash back again.
Now a voice, echoing faintly through the basement.
"Preeeee-cious."
The little dog barked and jumped in place. Its fat little body quivered with the barks.
Now a wet kissing sound.
The dog looked up at the kitchen floor above, but that wasn't where the sound came from.
A smack-smack sound like eating. "Come on, Precious. Come on, Sweetheart."
On its tiptoes, ears up, the dog went into the gloom.
Slurp-slurp. "Come on, Sweetums, come on, Precious."
The poodle could smell the chicken bone tied to the bucket handle. It scratched at the side of the well and whined.
Smack-smack-smack.
The small poodle jumped up onto the wooden cover of the well. The smell was over here, between the bucket and the hole. The little dog barked at the bucket, whined in indecision. The chicken bone twitched ever so slightly.
The poodle crouched with its nose between its front paws, behind in the air, wagging furiously. It barked twice and pounced on the chicken bone, gripping it with its teeth. The bucket seemed to be trying to nose the little dog away from the chicken. The poodle growled at the bucket and held on, straddling the handle, teeth firmly clamped on the bone. Suddenly the bucket bumped the poodle over, off its feet, pushed it, it struggled to get up, bumped again, it struggled with the bucket, a back foot and haunch went off in the hole, its claws scrabbled frantically at the wood, the bucket sliding, wedging in the hole with the dog's hindquarters and the little dog pulled free, the bucket slipping over the edge and plunging, the bucket escaping down the hole with the chicken bone. The poodle barked angrily down the hole, barks ringing down in the well. Then it stopped barking and cocked its head at a sound only it could hear. It scrambled off the top of the well and went up the stairs yipping as a door slammed somewhere upstairs.
Catherine Baker Martin's tears spread hot on her cheeks and fell, plucking at the front of her jumpsuit, soaking through, warm on her breasts, and she believed that she would surely die.
CHAPTER 42
Crawford stood alone in the center of his study with his hands jammed deep in his pockets. He stood there from 12:30 A.M. to 12:33, demanding an idea. Then he telexed the California Department of Motor Vehicles requesting a trace on the motor home Dr. Lecter said Raspail had bought in California, the one Raspail used in his romance with Klaus. Crawford asked the DMV to check for traffic tickets issued to any driver other than Benjamin Raspail.
Then he sat on the sofa with a clipboard and worked out a provocative personal ad to run in the major papers:
Junoesque creamy passion flower, 21, model, seeks man who appreciates quality AND quantity. Hand and cosmetic model, you've seen me in the magazine ads, now I'd like to see you. Send pix first letter.
Crawford considered for a moment, scratched out "Junoesque," and substituted "full-figured."
His head dipped and he dozed. The green screen of the computer terminal made tiny squares in the lenses of his glasses. Movement on the screen now, the lines crawling upward, moving on Crawford's lenses. In his sleep he shook his head as though the image tickled him.
The message was:
MEMPHIS POX RECOVERED 2 ITEMS IN SEARCH OF LECTER'S CELL.
(1) IMPROVISED HANDCUFF KEY MADE FROM BALLPOINT TUBE. INCISIONS BY ABRASION, BALTIMORE REQUESTED TO CHECK HOSPITAL CELL FOR TRACES OF MANUFACTURE, AUTH COPLEY, SAC MEMPHIS.
(2) SHEET OF NOTEPAPER LEFT FLOATING IN TOILET BY FUGITIVE. ORIGINAL EN ROUTE TO WX DOCUMENT SECTION/LAB. GRAPHIC OF WRITING FOLLOWS. GRAPHIC SPLIT TO LANGLEY, ATTN: BENSON--CRYPTOGRAPHY.
When the graphic appeared, rising like something peeping over the bottom edge of the screen, it was this:
The soft double beep of the computer terminal did not wake Crawford, but three minutes later the telephone did. It was Jerry Burroughs at the National Crime Information Center hotline.
"See your screen, Jack?"
"Just a second," Crawford said. "Yeah, okay."
"The lab's got it already, Jack. The drawing Lecter left in the john. The numbers between the letters in Chilton's name, it's biochemistry-- C33H36N4O6 --it's the formula for a pigment in human bile called bilirubin. Lab advises it's a chief coloring, agent in shit."
"Balls."
"You were right about Lecter, Jack. He was just jerking them around. Too bad for Senator Martin. Lab says bilirubin's just about exactly the color, of Chilton's hair. Asylum humor, they call it. Did you see Chilton on the six o'clock news?"
"No."
"Marilyn Sutter saw it upstairs. Chilton was blowing off about "The Search for Billy Rubin." Then he went to dinner with a television reporter. That's where he was when Lecter took a walk. What a pluperfect asshole."
"Lecter told Starling to 'bear in mind' that Chilton didn't have a medical degree," Crawford said.
"Yeah I saw it in the summary. I think Chilton tried to fuck Starling's what I think, and she sawed him off at the knees. He may be dumb but he ain't blind. How is the kid?"
"Okay, I think. Worn down."
"Think Lecter was jerking her off too?"
"Maybe. We'll stay with it, though. I don't know what the clinics are doing, I keep thinking I should've gone after the records in court. I hate to have to depend on them. Midmorning, if we haven't heard anything, we'll go the court route."
"Say, Jack… you got some people outside that know what Lecter looks like, right?"
"Sure."
"Don't you know he's laughing somewhere."
"Maybe not for long," Crawford said.
CHAPTER 43
Dr. Hannibal Lecter stood at the registration desk of the elegant Marcus Hotel in St. Louis. He wore a brown hat and a raincoat buttoned to the neck. A neat surgical bandage covered his nose and cheeks.
He signed the register "Lloyd Wyman," a signature he had practiced in Wyman's car.
"How will you be paying, Mr. Wyman?" the clerk said.
"American Express." Dr. Lecter handed the man Lloyd Wyman's credit card.
Soft piano music came from the lounge. At the bar Dr. Lecter could see two people with bandages across their noses. A middle-aged couple crossed to the elevators, humming a Cole Porter tune. The woman wore a gauze patch over her eye.
The clerk finished making the credit card impression. "You do know, Mr. Wyman, you're entitled to use the hospital garage."
"Yes, thank you," Dr. Lecter said. He had already parked Wyman's car in the garage, with Wyman in the trunk.
The bellman who carried Wyman's bags to the small suite got one of Wyman's five-dollar 'bills in compensation.
Dr. Lecter ordered a drink and a sandwich and relaxed with a long shower.
The suite seemed enormous to Dr. Lecter after his long confinement. He enjoyed going to and fro in his suite and walking up and down in it.
From his windows he could see across the street the Myron and Sadie Fleischer Pavilion of St. Louis City Hospital, housing one of the world's foremost centers for craniofacial surgery.
Dr. Lecter's visage was too well known for him to be able to take advantage of the plastic surgeons here, but it was one place in the world where he could walk around with a bandage on his face without exciting interest.
He had stayed here once before, years ago, when he was doing psychiatric research in the superb Robert J. Brockman Memorial Library.
Heady to have a window, several windows. He stood at his windows in the dark, watching the car lights move across the MacArthur Bridge and savoring his drink. He was pleasantly fatigued by the five-hour drive from Memphis.
The only real rush of the evening had been in the underground garage at Memphis International Airport. Cleaning up with cotton pads and alcohol and distilled water in the back of the parked ambulance was not at all convenient. Once he was in the attendant's whites, it was just a matter of catching a single traveler in a deserted aisle of long-term parking in the great garage. The man obligingly leaned into the trunk of his car for his sample case, and never saw Dr. Lecter come up behind him.
Dr. Lecter wondered if the police believed he was fool enough to fly from the airport.
The only problem on the drive to St. Louis was finding the lights, the dimmers, and the wipers in the foreign car, as Dr. Lecter was unfamiliar with stalk controls beside the steering wheel.
Tomorrow he would shop for things he needed, hair bleach, barbering supplies, a sunlamp, and there were other, prescription, items that he would obtain to make some immediate changes in his appearance. When it was convenient, he would move on.
There was no reason to hurry.
CHAPTER 44
Ardelia Mapp was in her usual position, propped up in bed with a book. She was listening to all-news radio. She turned it off when Clarice Starling trudged in. Looking into Starling's drawn face, blessedly she didn't ask anything except, "Want some tea?"
When she was studying, Mapp drank a beverage she brewed of mixed loose leaves her grandmother sent her, which she called "Smart People's Tea."
Of the two brightest people Starling knew, one was also the steadiest person she knew and the other was the most frightening. Starling hoped that gave her some balance in her acquaintance.
"You were lucky to miss today," Mapp said. "That damn Kim Won ran us right into the ground. I'm not lying. I believe they must have more gravity in Korea than we do. Then they come over here and get light, see, get jobs teaching PE because it's not any work for them… John Brigham came by."
"When?"
"Tonight, a little while ago. Wanted to know if you were back yet. He had his hair slicked down. Shifted around like a freshman in the lobby. We had a little talk. He said if you're behind and we need to jam instead of shoot during the range period the next couple of days, he'll open up the range this weekend and let us make it up. I said I'd let him know. He's a nice man."
"Yeah, he is."
"Did you know he wants you to shoot against the DEA and Customs in the interservice match?"
"Nope "
"Not the Women's. The Open. Next question: Do you know the Fourth Amendment stuff for Friday?"
"A lot of it I do."
"Okay, what's Chimel versus California?"
"Searches in secondary schools."
"What about school searches?"
"I don't know."
"It's the 'immediate reach' concept. Who was Schneckloth?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"Schneckloth versus Bustamonte."
"Is it the reasonable expectation of privacy?"
"Boo to you. Expectation of privacy is the Katz principle. Schneckloth is consent to search. I can see we've got to jam on the books, my girl. I've got the notes."
"Not tonight."
"No. But tomorrow you'll wake up with your mind fertile and ignorant, and then we'll begin to plant the harvest for Friday. Starling, Brigham said-- he's not supposed to tell, so I promised-- he said you'll beat the hearing. He thinks that signifying son of a bitch Krendler won't remember you two days from now. Your grades are good, we'll knock this stuff out easy." Mapp studied Starling's tired face. "You, did the best anybody could for that poor soul, Starling. You stuck your neck out for her and you got your butt kicked for her and you moved things along. You deserve a chance yourself. Why don't you go ahead and crash? I'm fixing to shut this down myself."
"Ardelia. Thanks."
And after the lights were out.
"Starling?"
"Yeah?"
"Who do you think's prettiest, Brigham or Hot Bobby Lowrance?"
"That's a hard one."
"Brigham's got a tattoo on his shoulder, I could see it through his shirt. What does it say?"
"I wouldn't have any idea."
"Will you let me know soon as you find out?"
"Probably not."
"I told you about Hot Bobby's python briefs."
"You just saw 'em through the window when he was lifting weights."
"Did Gracie tell you that? That girl's mouth is gonna--"
Starling was asleep.
CHAPTER 45
Shortly before 3:00 A.M., Crawford, dozing beside his wife, came awake. There was a catch in Bella's breathing and she had stirred on her bed. He sat up and took her hand.
"Bella?"
She took a deep breath and let it out. Her eyes were open for the first time in days. Crawford put his face close before hers, but he didn't think she could see him.
"Bella, I love you, kid," he said in case she could hear.
Fear brushed the walls of his chest, circling inside him like a bat in a house. Then he got hold of it.
He wanted to get something for her, anything, but he did not want her to feel him let go of her hand.
He put his ear to her chest. He heard a soft beat, a flutter, and then her heart stopped. There was nothing to hear, there was only a curious cool rushing. He didn't know if the sound was in her chest or only in his ears.
"God bless you and keep you with Him… and with your folks," Crawford. said, words he wanted to be true.
He gathered her to him on the bed, sitting against the headboard, held her to his chest while her brain died. His chin pushed back the scarf from the remnants of her hair. He did not cry. He had done all that.
Crawford changed her into her favorite, her best bed gown and sat for a while beside the high bed, holding her hand against his cheek. It was a square, clever hand, marked with a lifetime of gardening, marked by IV needles now.
When she came in from the garden, her hands smelled like thyme.
("Think about it like egg white on your fingers," the girls at school had counseled Bella about sex. She and Crawford had joked about it in bed, years ago, years later, last year. Don't think about that, think about the good stuff, the pure stuff. That was the pure stuff. She wore a round hat and white gloves and going up in the elevator the first time he whistled a dramatic arrangement of "Begin the Beguine." In the room she teased him that he had the cluttered pockets of a boy.)
Crawford tried going into the next room-- he still could turn when he wanted to and see her through the open door, composed in the warm light of the bedside lamp. He was waiting for her body to become a ceremonial object apart from him, separate from the person he had held upon the bed and separate from the life's companion he held now in his mind. So he could call them to come for her.
His empty hands hanging palms forward at his sides, he stood at the window looking to the empty east. He did not look for dawn; east was only the way the window faced.
CHAPTER 46
"Ready, Precious?"
Jame Gumb was propped against the headboard of his bed and very comfortable, the little dog curled up warm on his tummy.
Mr. Gumb had just washed his hair and he had a towel wrapped around his head. He rummaged in the sheets, found the remote control for his VCR, and pushed the play button.
He had composed his program from two pieces of videotape copied onto one cassette. He watched it every day when he was making vital preparations, and he always watched it just before he harvested a hide.
The first tape was from scratchy film of Movietone News, a black-and-white newsreel from 1948. It was the quarter-finals of the Miss Sacramento contest, a preliminary event on the long road to the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City.
This was the swimsuit competition, and all the girls carried flowers as they came in a file to the stairs and mounted to the stage.
Mr. Gumb's poodle had been through this many times and she squinted her eyes when she heard the music, knowing she'd be squeezed.
The beauty contestants looked very World War II. They wore Rose Marie Reid swimsuits, and some of the faces were lovely. Their legs were nicely shaped too, some of them, but they lacked muscle tone and seemed to lap a little at the knee.
Gumb squeezed the poodle.
"Precious, here she comes, hereshecomes hereshecomes!"
And here she came, approaching the stairs in her white swimsuit, with a radiant smile for the young man who assisted at the stairs, then quick on her high heels away, the camera following the backs of her thighs: Mom. There was Mom.
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