hapter 18

The guard took Clarice Starling to the second level above the Smithsonian's great stuffed elephant. The elevator door opened onto that vast dim floor and Crawford was waiting there alone, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat.

"Evening, Starling."

"Hello," she said.

Crawford spoke over her shoulder to the guard. "We can make it from here by ourselves, Officer, thank you."

Crawford and Starling walked side by side along a corridor in the stacked trays and cases of anthropologi¬cal specimens. A few ceiling lights were on, not many. As she fell with him into the hunched, reflective atti¬tude of a campus stroll, Starling became aware that Crawford wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, that he would have done it if it were possible for him to touch her.

She waited for him to say something. Finally she stopped, put her hands in her pockets too, and they faced each other across the passage in the silence of the bones.

Crawford leaned his head back against the cases and took a deep breath through his nose. "Catherine Martin's probably still alive," he said.

Starling nodded, kept her head down after the last nod. Maybe he would find it easier to talk if she didn't look at him. He was steady, but something had hold of him. Starling wondered for a second if his wife had died. Or maybe spending all day with Catherine's grieving mother had done it.

"Memphis was pretty much of a wipe," he said. "He got her on the parking lot, I think. Nobody saw it. She went in her apartment and then she came back out for some reason. She didn't mean to stay out long--- she left the door ajar and flipped the deadbolt so it wouldn't lock behind her. Her keys were on top of the TV. Noth¬ing disturbed inside. I don't think she was in the apart¬ment long. She never got as far as her answering machine in the bedroom. The message light was still blinking when her yo-yo boyfriend finally called the police." Crawford idly let his hand fall into a tray of bones, and quickly took it out again.

"So now he's got her, Starling. The networks agreed not to do a countdown on the evening news--- Dr. Bloom thinks it eggs him on. A couple of the tabloids'll do it anyway."

In one previous abduction, clothing slit up the back had been found soon enough to identify a Buffalo Bill victim while she was still being held alive. Starling remembered the black-bordered countdown on the front pages of the trash papers. It reached eighteen days before the body floated.

"So Catherine Baker Martin's waiting in BilYs green room, Starling, and we have maybe a week: That's at the outside--- Bloom thinks his period's getting shorter."

This seemed like a lot of talk for Crawford. The theatrical "green room" reference smacked of bullshit. Starling waited for him to get to the point, and then he did.

"But this time, Starling, this time we may have a little break."

She looked up at him beneath her brows, hopeful and watchful too.

"We've got another insect. Your fellows, Pilcher and that... other one."

'Roden."

"They're working on it." .

"Where was it--- Cincinnati?--- the girl in the freezer?"

"No. Come on and I'll show you. Let's see what you think about it."

"Entomology's the other way, Mr. Crawford."

"I know," he said.

They rounded the corner to the door of Anthropol¬ogy. Light and voices came through the frosted glass. She went in.

Three men in laboratory coats worked at a table in the center of the room beneath a brilliant light. Starling couldn't see what they were doing. Jerry Burroughs from Behavioral Science was looking over their shoul¬ders taking notes on a clipboard. There was a familiar odor in the room.

Then one of the men in white moved to put some¬thing in the sink and she could see all right.

In a stainless-steel, tray on the workbench was "Klaus," the head she had found in the Split City Mini¬Storage.

"Klaus had the bug in his throat," Crawford said. "Hold on a minute, Starling. Jerry, are you talking to the wire room?"

Burroughs was reading from his clipboard into the telephone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Yeah, Jack, they're drying the art on Klaus."

Crawford took the receiver from him. "Bobby, don't wait for the Interpol split. Get a picture wire and trans¬mit the photographs now, along with the medical. Scandinavian countries, West Germany, the Nether¬lands. Be sure to say Klaus could be a merchant sailor that jumped ship. Mention that their National Health may have a claim for the cheekbone fracture. Call it the what, the zygomatic arch. Make sure you move both dental charts, the universal and the Federation Dentaire. They're coming with an age, but emphasize that it's a rough estimate--- you can't depend on skull su¬tures for that." He gave the phone back to Burroughs. "Where's your gear, Starling?"

"The guard office downstairs."

"Johns Hopkins found the insect," Crawford said as they waited for the elevator. "They were doing the head for the Baltimore County police. It was in the throat, just like the girl in West Virginia."

"Just like West Virginia."

"You clucked. Johns Hopkins found it about seven tonight. The Baltimore district attorney called me on the plane. They sent the whole thing over, Klaus and all, so we could see it in situ. They also wanted an opinion from Dr. Angel on Klaus' age and how old he was when he fractured his cheekbone. They consult the Smithsonian just like we do."

"I have to deal with this a second. You're saying maybe Buffalo Bill killed Klaus? Years ago?"

"Does it seem farfetched, too much of a coinci¬dence?"

"Right this second it does."

"Let it cook a minute."

"Dr. Lecter told me where to find Klaus," Starling said.

"Yes, he did."

"Dr. Lecter told me his patient, Benjamin Raspail, claimed to have killed Klaus. But Lecter said he be¬lieved it was probably accidental erotic asphyxia."

"That's what he said."

"You think maybe Dr. Lecter knows exactly how Klaus died, and it wasn't Raspail, and it wasn't erotic asphyxia?"

"Klaus had a bug in his throat, the girl in West Vir¬ginia had a bug in her throat. I never saw that anywhere else. Never read about it, never heard of it. What do you think?"

"I think you told me to pack for two days. You want me to ask Dr. Letter, don't you."

"You're the one he talks to, Starling." Crawford looked so sad when he said, "I figure you're game."

She nodded.

"We'll talk on the way to the asylum," he said.

Chapter 19

"Dr. Lecter had a big psy¬chiatric practice for years before we caught him for the murders," Crawford said. "He did a slew of psychiatric evaluations for the Maryland and Virginia courts and some others up and down the East Coast. He's seen a lot of the criminally insane. Who knows what he turned loose, just for fun? That's one way he could know. Also, he knew Raspail socially and Raspail told him things in therapy. Maybe Raspail told him who killed Klaus."

Crawford and Starling faced each other in swivel chairs in the back of the surveillance van, whizzing north on U.S. 95 toward Baltimore, thirty-seven miles away. Jeff, in the driver's compartment, clearly had orders to step on it.

"Lecter offered to help, and I had no part of him. I've had his help before. He gave us nothing useful and he helped Will Graham get a knife jammed through his face last time. For fun.

"But a bug in Klaus' throat, a bug in the girl's throat in West Virginia, I can't ignore that. Alan Bloom's never heard of that specific act before, and neither have I. Have you ever run across it before, Starling? You've read the literature since I have."

"Never. Inserting other objects, yes, but never an insect."

"Two things to begin with. First, we go on the prem¬ise that Dr. Lecter really knows something concrete. Second, we remember that Lecter looks only for the fun. Never forget fun. He has to want Buffalo Bill caught while Catherine Martin's still alive. All the fun and benefits have to lie in that direction. We've got nothing to threaten him with--- he's lost his commode seat and his books already. That cleans him out."

"What would happen if we just told him the situa¬tion and offered him something--- a cell with a view. That's what he asked for when he offered to help."

"He offered to help, Starling. He didn't offer to snitch. Snitching wouldn't give him enough of a chance to show off. You're doubtful. You favor the truth. Listen, Lecter's in no hurry. He's followed this like it was baseball. We ask him to snitch, he'll wait. He won't do it right away."

"Even for a reward? Something he won't get if Cath¬erine Martin dies?"

"Say we tell him we know he's got information and we want him to snitch. He'd have the most fun by waiting and acting like he's trying to remember week after week, getting Senator Martin's hopes up and let¬ting Catherine die, and then tormenting the next mother and the next, getting their hopes up, always just about to remember--- that would be better than having a view. It's the kind of thing he lives on. It's his nourishment.

"I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell. We can dodge some right there."

"So Dr. Lecter has to think we're coming to him strictly for theory and insight," Starling said.

"Correct."

"Why did you tell me? Why didn't you just send me in to ask him that way?"

"I level with you. You'll do the same when you have a command. Nothing else works for long."

"So there's no mention of the insect in Klaus' throat, no connection between Klaus and Buffalo Bill."

"No. You came back to him because you were so impressed that he could predict Buffalo Bill would start scalping. I'm on the record dismissing him and so is Alan Bloom. But I'm letting you fool with it. You have an offer for some privileges--- stuff that only somebody as powerful as Senator Martin could get for him. He has to believe he should hurry because the offer ends if Catherine dies. The Senator totally loses interest in him if that happens. And if he fails, it's because he's not¬ smart and knowledgeable enough to do what he said he could do--- it's not because he's holding out to spite us."

"Will the Senator lose interest?"

"Better you should be able to say under oath that you never knew the answer to that question."

"I see." So Senator Martin hadn't been told. That took some nerve. Clearly, Crawford was afraid of inter¬ference, afraid the Senator might make the mistake of appealing to Dr. Lecter.

"Do you see?"

"Yes. How can he be specific enough to steer us to Buffalo Bill without showing he's got special knowl¬edge? How can he do that with just theory and in¬sight?"

"I don't know, Starling. He's had a long time to think about it. He's waited through six victims."

The scrambler phone in the van buzzed and blinked with the first of a series of calls Crawford had placed with the FBI switchboard.

Over the next twenty minutes he talked to officers he knew in the Dutch State Police and Royal Marechau¬see, an Overstelojtnant in the Swedish Technical Police who had studied at Quantico, a personal acquaintance who was assistant to the Rigspolitichef of the Danish governmental police, and he surprised Starling by breaking into French with the night command desk of the Belgian Police Criminelle. Always he stressed the need for speed in identifying Klaus and his associates. Each jurisdiction would already have the request on its Interpol telex but, with the old-boy network buzzing, the request wouldn't hang from the machine for hours.

Starling could see that Crawford had chosen the van for its communications--- it had the new Voice Privacy system--- but the job would have been easier from his office. Here he had to juggle his notebooks on the tiny desk in marginal light, and they bounced each time the tires hit a tar strip. Starling's field experience was small, but she knew how unusual it was for a section chief to be booming along in a van on an errand like this. He could have briefed her over the radio telephone. She was glad he had not.

Starling had the feeling that the quiet and calm in this van, the time allowed for this mission to proceed in an orderly way, had been purchased at a high price. Listening to Crawford on the phone confirmed it.

He was speaking with the Director at home now. "No sir. Did they rollover for it?... How long? No sir. No. No wire. Tommy, that's my recommendation, I stand on it. I do not want her to wear a wire. Dr. Bloom says the same thing. He's fogged in at O'Hare. He'll come as soon as it clears. Right."

Then Crawford had a cryptic telephone conversation with the night nurse at his house. When he had fin¬ished, he looked out the one-way window of the van for perhaps a minute, his glasses held on his knee in the crook of his finger, his face looking naked as the oncoming lights crawled across it. Then he put the glasses on and turned back to Starling.

"We have Lecter for three days. If we don't get any results, Baltimore sweats him until the court pulls them off."

"Sweating him didn't work last time. Dr. Lecter doesn't sweat much."

"What did he give them after all that, a paper chicken?"

"A chicken, yes." The crumpled origami chicken was still in Starling's purse. She smoothed it out on the little desk and made it peck.

"I don't blame the Baltimore cops. He's their pris¬oner. If Catherine floats, they have to be able to tell Senator Martin they tried it all."

"How is Senator Martin?"

"Game but hurting. She's a smart, tough woman with a lot of sense, Starling. You'd probably like her."

"Will Johns Hopkins and Baltimore County homi¬cide keep quiet about the bug in Klaus' throat? Can we keep it out of the papers?"

"For three days at least."

"That took some doing."

"We can't trust Frederick Chilton, or anybody else at the hospital," Crawford said. "If Chilton knows, the world knows. Chilton has to know you're there, but it's simply a favor you're doing Baltimore Homicide, trying to close the Klaus case--- it has nothing to do with Buf¬falo Bill."

"And I'm doing this late at night?"

"That's the only time I'd give you. I should tell you, the business about the bug in West Virginia will be in the morning papers. The Cincinnati coroner's office spilled it, so that's no secret anymore. It's an inside detail that Lecter can get from you, and it doesn't matter, really, as long as he doesn't know we found one in Klaus too."

"What have we got to trade him?"

"I'm working on it," Crawford said, and turned back to his telephones.