hapter 6

THE CHAMBER Where Mason spends his life is quiet, but it has its own soft pulse, the hiss and sigh of the respirator that finds him breath. It is dark except for the glow of the big aquarium where an exotic eel turns and turns in an endless figure eight, its cast shadow moving like a ribbon over the room.

Mason's plaited hair lies in a thick coil on the respirator shell covering his chest on the elevated bed. A device of tubes, like panpipes, is suspended before him.

Mason's long tongue slides out from between his teeth. He scrolls his tongue around the end pipe and puffs with the next pulse of the respirator.

Instantly a voice responds from a speaker on the wall. Yes, sir."

"The Tattler."

The initial t's are lost, but the voice is deep and resonant, a radio voice.

"Page one has-"

"Don't read to me. Put it up on the elmo."

The d end m and the p are lost from Mason's speech.

The large screen of an elevated monitor crackles. Its blue-green glow goes pink as the red masthead of they Tattler appears.

"DEATH ANGEL: CLARICE STARLING, THE FBI's KILLING MACHINE," Mason reads, through three slow breaths of his respirator. He can zoom on the Pictures. Only one of his arms is out from under the covers of his bed. He has some movement in the hand. Like a pale spider crab the hand moves, more by the motion of the fingers than the power of his wasted arm. Since Mason cannot turn his head much to see, the index and middle fingers feel ahead like antennae as the thumb ring and little fingers scuttle the hand along. It finds the remote, where he can zoom and turn the pages.

Mason reads slowly. The goggle over his single eye makes a tiny hiss twice a minute as it sprays moisture on his lidless eyeball, and often fogs the lens. It takes him twenty minutes to get through the main article and the sidebar.

"Put up the X ray," he said when he had finished.

It took a moment. The large sheet of X-ray film required a light table to show up well on the monitor; here was a human hand, apparently damaged. Here was another exposure, showing the hand and the entire arm. A pointer pasted on the X ray showed an old fracture in the humerus about halfway between the elbow and the shoulder.

Mason looked at it through many breaths. "Put up the letter," he said at last.

Fine copperplate appeared on the screen, the ban ;y writing absurdly large in magnification.

Dear Clarice, Mason read, I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming.

. . . The very rhythm of the voice excited in him old thoughts that spun him, spun his bed, spun his room, tore the scabs off his unspeakable dreams, raced his heart ahead of his breath. The machine sensed his excitement and filled his lungs ever faster.

He read it all, at his painful rate, reading over the moving machine, like reading on horseback.

Mason could not close his eye, but when he had finished reading, his mind went away from behind his eye for a while to think. The breathing machine slowed down. Then he puffed on his pipe.

"Yes, sir."

"Punch up Congressman Vellmore. Bring me the headphone. Turn off the speakerphone.

"Clarice Starling," he said to himself with the next breath the machine permitted him. The name has no plosive sounds and he managed it very well. None of the sounds was lost. While he waited for the telephone, he dozed a moment, the shadow of the eel crawling over his sheet and his face and his coiled hair.

Chapter 7

BUZZARD'S POINT, the FBI's field office for Washington and the District of Columbia, is named for a gathering of vultures at a Civil War hospital on the site.

The gathering today is of middle-management officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI to discuss Clarice Starling's fate.

Starling stood alone on the thick carpet of her boss's office. She could hear her pulse thump beneath the bandage around her head. Over her pulse she hear the voices of the men, muffled by the frosted-glass door of an adjoining conference room.

The great seal of the FBI with its motto, "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity," is rendered handsomely in gold leaf on the glass. The voices behind the seal rose and fell with some passion; Starling could hear her name when no other word was clear.

The office has a fine view across the yacht basin to Fort McNair, where the accused Lincoln assassination conspirators were hanged.

Starling flashed on photos she had seen of Mary Surratt, walking past her own casket and mounting the gallows at Fort McNair, standing hooded on the trap, her skirts tied around her legs to prevent immodesty as she dropped through to the loud crunch and the dark.

Next door, Starling heard the chairs scrape back as the men got to their feet. They were filing into this office now. Some of the faces she recognized. Jesus, there was Noonan, the A/DIC over the whole investigation division.

And there was her nemesis, Paul Krendler from justice, with his long neck and his round ears set high on his head like the ears of a hyena. Krendler was a climber, the gray eminence at the shoulder of the Inspector General. Since she caught the serial killer Buffalo Bill ahead of him in a celebrated case seven years ago, he had dripped poison into her personnel file at every opportunity, and whispered close to the ears of the Career Board.

None of these men had ever been on the line with her, served a warrant with her, been shot at with her or combed the glass splinters out of their hair with her.

The men did not look at her until they all looked at once, the way a sidling pack turns its attention suddenly on the cripple in the herd.

"Have a chair, Agent Starling."

Her boss, Special Agent Clint Pearsall, rubbed his thick wrist as though his watch hurt him.

Without meeting her eyes, he gestured toward an armchair facing the windows. The chair in an interrogation is not the place of honor.

The seven men remained standing, their silhouettes black against the bright windows. Starling could not see their faces now, but below the glare, she could see their legs and feet. Five were wearing the thick-soled tasseled loafers favored by country slicksters who have made it to Washington. A pair of Thom McAn wing tips with Corfam soles and some Florsheim wing tips rounded out the seven. A smell in the air of shoe polish, warmed by hot feet.

"In case you don't know everybody, Agent Starling,, this is Assistant Director Noonan, I'm sure you know who he is; this is John Eldredge from DEA, Bob Sneed, BATF, Benny Holcomb is assistant to the mayor and Larkin Wainwright is an examiner from; our Office of Professional Responsibility," Pearsall said. "Paul Krendler - you know Paul - came over unofficially from the Inspector General's Office at Justice. Paul's here as a favor to us, he's here and he's not here, just to help us head off trouble, if you follow me."

Starling knew what the saying was in the service a federal examiner is someone who arrives at the battlefield after the battle is over and bayonets the wounded. The heads of some of the silhouettes bobbed in greeting. The men craned their necks and considered the young woman they were gathered over. For a few beats, nobody spoke.

Bob Sneed broke the silence. Starling remembered, him as the BATF spin-doctor who tried to deodorize the Branch Davidian disaster at Waco. He was a crony of Krendler's and considered a climber.

"Agent Starling, you've seen the coverage in the papers and on television, you've been widely identified as the shooter in the death of Evelda Drumgo. Unfortunately, you've been sort of demonized."

Starling did not reply.

"Agent Starling?"

"I have nothing to do with the news, Mr. Sneed."

"The woman had the baby in her arms, you can see the problem that creates."

"Not in her arms, in a sling across her chest and her arms and hands were beneath it, under a blanket, where she had her MAC 10."

"Have you seen the autopsy protocol?" Sneed asked.

"No."

"But you've never denied being the shooter."

"Do you think I'd deny it because you haven't recovered the slug?" She turned to her bureau chief. "Mr. Pearsall, this is a friendly meeting, right?"

"Absolutely."

"Then why is Mr. Sneed wearing a wire? Engineering Division quit making those tiepin microphones years ago. He's got an F-Bird in his breast pocket just recording away. Are we wearing wires to one another's offices now?"

Pearsall's face turned red. If Sneed was wired, it was the worst kind of treachery, but nobody wanted to be heard on tape telling Sneed to turn it off.

"We don't need any attitude from you or accusations," Sneed said, pale with anger. "We're all here to help you."

"To help me do what? Your agency called this office and got me assigned to help you on this raid. I gave Evelda Drumgo two chances to surrender. She was holding a MAC 10 under the baby blanket. She had already shot John Brigham. I wish she had given up. She didn't. She shot me. I shot her. She's dead. You, might want to check your tape counter right there, Mr. Sneed."

"You had foreknowledge Evelda Drumgo would be there?" Eldredge wanted to know.

"Foreknowledge? Agent Brigham told me in the van going over that Evelda Drumgo was cooking in a guarded meth lab. He assigned me to deal with her."

"Remember, Brigham is dead," Krendler said, "and so is Burke, damn fine agents, both of them. They're not here to confirm or deny anything."

It turned Starling's stomach to hear Krendler say John Brigham's name.

"I'm not likely to forget John Brigham is dead, Mr. Krendler, and he was a good agent, and a good friend of mine. The fact is he asked me to deal with Evelda."

"Brigham gave you that assignment even through you and Evelda Drumgo had had a run-in before," Krendler said.

"Come on, Paul," Clint Pearsall said.

"What run-in?" Starling said. "A peaceful arrest. She had fought other officers before at arrests. She didn't fight me when I arrested her before, and we talked a little - she was smart. We were civil to each other. I hoped I could do it again."

"Did you make the verbal statement that you would `deal with her?" Sneed said.

"I acknowledged my instructions."

Holcomb from the mayor's office and Sneed put their heads together.

Sneed shot his cuffs. "Ms Starling, we have information from Officer Bolton of the Washington PD that you made inflammatory statements about Ms Drumgo in the van on the way to the confrontation. Want to comment on that?"

"On Agent Brigham's instructions I explained to the other officers that Evelda had a history of violence, she was usually armed and she was HIV positive. I said we would give her a chance to surrender peacefully. I asked for physical help in subduing her if it came to that. There weren't many volunteers for the job, I can tell you."

Clint Pearsall made an effort. "After the Crip shooters' car crashed and one perp fled, you could see the car rocking and you could hear the baby crying inside the car?"

"Screaming," Starling said. "I raised my hand for everybody to stop shooting and I came out of cover."

"That's against procedure right there," Eldredge said.

Starling ignored him. "I approached the car in the ready position, weapon out, muzzle depressed. Marquez Burke was lying on the ground between us. Somebody ran out and got a compress on him. Evelda got out with the baby. I asked her to show me her hands, I said something like `Evelda, don't do this."

"She shot, you shot. Did she go right down?"

Starling nodded. "Her legs collapsed and she sat down in the road, leaning over the baby. She was dead."

"You grabbed up the baby and ran to the water. Exhibited concern," Pearsall said.

"I don't know what I exhibited. He had blood all over, him. I didn't know if the baby was HIV positive or not;' I knew she was."

"And you thought your bullet might have hit the baby," Krendler said.

"No. I knew where the bullet went. Can I speak freely, Mr. Pearsall?" When he did not meet her eyes, she went on. "This raid was an ugly mess. It put me in a position where I had a choice of dying or shooting a woman holding a child. I chose, and what I had to do burns me. I shot a female carrying an infant. The lower animals don't 'even do that. Mr. Sneed, you might`, want to check your tape counter again, right there' where I admit it. I resent the hell out of being put in that position. I resent the way I feel now." She flashed on Brigham lying facedown in the road and she went too far. "Watching you all run from it makes me sick at my stomach."

"Starling-"

Pearsall, anguished, looked her in the face for the first time.

"I know you haven't had a chance to write your 302 yet," Larkin Wainwright said. "When we review-" -"

"Yes, sir, I have," Starling said. "A copy's on the way to the Office of Professional Responsibility. I have a copy with me if you don't want to wait. I have everything I did and saw in there. See, Mr. Sneed, you had it all the time."

Starling's vision was a little too clear, a danger sign she recognized, and she consciously lowered her voice "This raid went wrong for a couple of reasons. BATF's snitch lied about the baby's location because the snitch was desperate for the raid to go down before his federal grand jury date in Illinois. And Evelda Drumgo knew we were coming. She came out with the money in one bag and the meth in another. Her beeper still showed the number for WFUL-TV. She got the beep five minutes before we got there. WFUL's helicopter got there with us. Subpoena WFUL's phone tapes and see who leaked. It's somebody whose interests are local gentlemen. If BATF had leaked, like they did in Waco, or DEA had leaked, they'd have done it to national media, not the local TV."

Benny Holcomb spoke for the city. "There's no evidence anybody in city government or the Washington police department leaked anything."

"Subpoena and see," Starling said.

"Do you have Drumgo's beeper?" Pearsall asked.

"It's under seal in the property room at Quantico."

Assistant Director Noonan's own beeper went off. He frowned at the number and excused himself from the room. In a moment, he summoned Pearsall to join him outside.

Wainwright, Eldredge and Holcomb looked out the window at Fort McNair, hands in their pockets. They might have been waiting in an intensive care unit. Paul Krendler caught Sneed's eye and urged him toward Starling.

Sneed put his hand on the back of Starling's chair and leaned over her. "If your testimony at a hearing is that, while you were on TDY assignment from the FBI, your weapon killed Evelda Drumgo, BATF is prepared to sign off on a statement that Brigham asked you to pay . . . special attention to Evelda in order to take her into custody peacefully. Your weapon killed her, that's where your service has to carry the can. There will be no interagency pissing contest over rules of engagement and we won't have to bring in any inflammatory old, hostile statements you made in the van about what sort of person she was."

Starling saw Evelda Drumgo for an instant, coming out of the doorway, coming out of the car, saw the carriage of her head and, despite the foolishness and waste of Evelda's life, saw her decision to take her chip and front her tormenters and not run from it.

Starling leaned close to the microphone on Sneed's tie and said clearly, "I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge the sort of person she was, Mr. Sneed: She was better than you."

Pearsall came back into the office without Noonan and closed the door. "Assistant Director Noonan has gone back to his office.

"Gentlemen, I'm going to call a halt to this meeting, and I'll get back to you individually by telephone," Pearsall said.

Krendler's head came up. He was suddenly alert the scent of politics.

"We've got to decide some things," Sneed began.

"No, we don't."

"But-"

"Bob, believe me, we don't have to decide anything, I'll get back to you. And, Bob?"

"Yeah?"

Pearsall grabbed the wire behind Sneed's tie and pulled down hard, popping buttons off Sneed's shirt and snatching tape loose from his skin. "You come to me with a wire again and I'll put my foot in your ass."

None of them looked at Starling as they left, except Krendler.

Moving toward the door, sliding his feet so he would not have to look where he was going, he used the extreme articulation of his long neck to turn his face to her, as a hyena would shuffle at the fringe of a herd, peering in at a candidate. Mixed hungers crossed his face; it was Krendler's nature to both appreciate Starling's leg and look for the hamstring.