hapter 23

Catherine Baker Martin lay seventeen feet below the cellar floor. The darkness was loud with her breath¬ing, loud with her heart. Sometimes the fear stood on her chest the way a trapper kills a fox. Sometimes she could think: she knew she was kidnapped, but she didn't know by whom. She knew she wasn't dreaming; in the absolute dark she could hear the tiny clicks her eyes made when she blinked.

She was better now than when she first regained consciousness. Much of the awful vertigo was gone, and she knew there was enough air. She could tell down from up and she had some sense of her body's position.

Her shoulder, hip, and knee hurt from being pressed against the cement floor where she lay. That side was down. Up was the rough futon she had crawled beneath during the last interval of blazing, blinding light. The throbbing in her head had subsided now. and her only real pain was in the fingers of her left hand. The ring finger was broken, she knew.

She wore a quilted jumpsuit that was strange to her. It was clean and smelled of fabric softener. The floor was clean too, except for the chicken bones and bits of vegetable her captor had raked into the hole. The only other objects with her were the futon and a plastic sanitation bucket with a thin string tied to the handle. It felt like cotton kitchen string and it led up into the darkness as far as she could reach.

Catherine Martin was free to move around, but there was no place to go. The floor she lay on was oval, about eight by ten feet, with a small drain in the center. It was the bottom of a deep covered pit. The smooth cement walls sloped gently inward as they rose.

Sounds from above now or was it her heart? Sounds from above. Sounds came clearly to her from overhead. The oubliette that held her was in the part of the base¬ment directly beneath the kitchen. Footsteps now across the kitchen floor, and running water. The scratching of dog claws on linoleum. Nothing then until a weak disc of yellow light through the open trap above as the basement lights came on. Then blazing light in the pit, and this time she sat up into the light, the futon across her legs, determined to look around, trying to peer through her fingers as her eyes adjusted, her shadow swaying around her as a floodlamp lowered into the pit swung on its cord high above.

She flinched as her toilet bucket moved, lifted, swayed upward on its flimsy string, twisting slowly as it rose toward the light. She tried to swallow down her fear, got too much air with it, but managed to speak.

"My family will pay," she said. "Cash. My mother will pay it now, no questions asked. This is her pri¬vate--- oh!" a flapping shadow down on her, only a towel. "This is her private number. It's 202-"

"Wash yourself."

It was the same unearthly voice she'd heard talking to the dog.

Another bucket coming down on a thin cord. She smelled hot, soapy water.

"Take it off and wash yourself all over, or you'll get the hose." And an aside to the dog as the voice faded, "Yes it will get the hose, won't it, Darlingheart, yes it will!"

Catherine Martin heard the footsteps and the claws on the floor above the basement. The double vision she'd had the first time the lights went on was gone now. She could see. How high was the top, was the floodlight on a strong cord? Could she snag it with the jumpsuit, catch something with the towel. Do something hell. The walls were so smooth, a smooth tube upward.

A crack in the cement a foot above her reach, the only blemish she could see. She rolled the futon as tightly as she could and tied the roll with the towel. Standing on it, wobbly, reaching for the crack, she got her fingernails in it for balance and peered up into the light. Squinting into the glare. It's a floodlight with a shade, hanging just a foot down into the pit, almost ten feet above her upstretched hand, it might as well be the moon, and he was coming, the futon was wobbling, she scrabbling at the crack in the wall for balance, hopping down, something, a flake falling past her face.

Something coming down past the light, a hose. A single spatter of icy water, a threat.

"Wash yourself. All over."

There was a washcloth in the bucket and floating in the water was a plastic bottle of an expensive foreign skin emollient.

She did it, goosebumps on her arms and thighs, nip¬ples sore and shriveled in the cool air, she squatted beside the bucket of warm water as close to the wall as she could get and washed.

"Now dry off and rub the cream all over. Rub it all over."

The cream was warm from the bath water. Its mois¬ture made the jumpsuit stick to her skin.

"Now pick up your litter and wash the floor."

She did that too, gathering the chicken bones and picking up the English peas. She put them in the bucket, and dabbed the little spots of grease on the cement. Something else here, near the wall. The flake that had fluttered down from the crack above. It was a human fingernail, covered with glitter polish and torn off far back in the quick.

The bucket was pulled aloft.

"My mother will pay," Catherine Martin said. "No questions asked. She'll pay enough for you all to be rich. If it's a cause, Iran or Palestine, or Black Liberation, she'll give the money for that. All you have to do---"

The lights went out. Sudden and total darkness.

She flinched and went "Uhhhhhh!" when her sanitation bucket settled beside her on its string. She sat on the futon, her mind racing. She believed now that her captor was alone, that he was a white American. She'd tried to give the impression she had no idea what he was, what color or how many, that her memory of the parking lot was wiped out by the blows on her head. She hoped that he believed he could safely let her go. Her mind was working, working, and at last it worked too well.

The fingernail, someone else was here. A woman, a girl was here. Where was she now? What did he do to her?

Except for shock and disorientation, it would not have been so long in coming to her. As it was, the skin emollient did it. Skin. She knew who had her then. The knowledge fell on her like every scalding awful thing on earth and she was screaming, screaming, under the futon, up and climbing, clawing at the wall, screaming until she. was coughing something warm and salty in her mouth, hands to her face, drying sticky on the backs of her hands and she lay rigid on the futon, arching off the floor from head to heels, her hands clenched in her hair.

Chapter 24

Clarice Starling's quarter bonged down through the telephone in the shabby orderlies' lounge. She dialed the van.

"Crawford."

"I'm at a pay phone outside the maximum security ward," Starling said. "Dr. Lecter asked me if the insect in West Virginia was a butterfly. He wouldn't elaborate. He said Buffalo Bill needs Catherine Martin because, I'm quoting, 'He wants a vest with tits on it.' Dr. Lecter wants to trade. He wants a 'more interesting' offer from the Senator."

"Did he break it off?"

"Yes."

"How soon do you think he'll talk again?"

"I think he'd like to do this over the next few days, but I'd rather hit him again now, if I can have some kind of urgent offer from the Senator."

"Urgent is right. We got an ID on the girl in West Virginia, Starling. A missing-person fingerprint card from Detroit rang the cherries in ID section about a half hour ago. Kimberly Jane Emberg, twenty-two, missing from Detroit since February seventh. We're canvassing her neighborhood for witnesses. The Charlottesville medical examiner says she died not later than February eleventh, and possibly the day before, the tenth."

"He only kept her alive three days," Starling said.

"His period's getting shorter. I don't think anybody's surprised." Crawford's voice was even. "He's had Catherine Martin about twenty-six hours. I think if Lecter can deliver, he'd better do it in your next conver¬sation. I'm set up in the Baltimore field office, the van patched you through. I have a room for you in the Hojo two blocks from the hospital if you need a catnap later on."

"He's leery, Mr. Crawford, he's not sure you'd let him have anything good. What he said about Buffalo Bill, he traded for personal information about me. I don't think there's any textual correlation between his questions and the case... Do you want to know the questions?"

"No."

"That's why you didn't make me wear a wire, isn't it? You thought it'd be easier for me, I'd be more likely to tell him stuff and please him if nobody else could hear."

"Here's another possibility for you: What if I trusted your judgment, Starling? What if I thought you were my best shot, and I wanted to keep a lot of second¬-guessers off your back? Would I have you wear a wire then?"

"No sir." You're famous for handling agents, aren't you, Mr. Crawfish? "What can we offer Dr. Lecter?"

"A couple of things I'm sending over. It'll be there in five minutes, unless you want to rest a little first."

"I'd rather do it now," Starling said. "Tell them to ask for Alonzo. Tell Alonzo I'll meet him in the corridor outside Section 8."

"Five minutes," Crawford said.

Starling walked up and down the linoleum of the shabby lounge far underground. She was the only brightness in the room.

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places with¬out windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the caf¨¦ curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're fright¬ened in the face of Doom. Starling was old enough to know that; she didn't let the room affect her.

Starling walked up and down. She gestured to the air. "Hold on, girl," she said aloud. She said it to Catherine Martin and she said it to herself. "We're better than this room. We're better than this fucking place," she said aloud. "We're better than wherever he's got you. Help me. Help me. Help me." She thought for an in-stant of her late parents. She wondered if they would be ashamed of her now--- just that question, not its pertinence, no qualifications--- the way we always ask it. The answer was no, they would not be ashamed of her.

She washed her face and went out into the hall.

The orderly Alonzo was in the corridor with a sealed package from Crawford. It contained a map and in¬structions. She read them quickly by the corridor light and pushed the button for Barney to let her in.

Chapter 25

Dr. Lecter was at his table, examining his corre¬spondence. Starling found it easier to approach the cage when he wasn't looking at her.

"Doctor."

He held up a finger for silence. When he had finished reading his letter, he sat musing, the thumb of his six-¬fingered hand beneath his chin, his index finger beside his nose. "What do you make of this?" he said, putting the document into the food carrier.

It was a letter from the U.S. Patent Office.

"This is about my crucifixion watch," Dr. Lecter said. "They won't give me a patent, but they advise me to copyright the face. Look here." He put a drawing the size of a dinner napkin in the carrier and Starling pulled it through. "You may have noticed that in most cruci¬fixions the hands point to, say, a quarter to three, or ten till two at the earliest, while the feet are at six. On this watch face, Jesus is on the cross, as you see there, and the arms revolve to indicate the time, just like the arms on the popular Disney watches. The feet remain at six and at the top a small second hand revolves in the halo. What do you think?"

The quality of the anatomical sketching was very good. The head was hers.

"You'll lose a lot of detail when it's reduced to watch size," Starling said.

"True, unfortunately, but think of the clocks. Do you think this is safe without a patent?"

"You'd be buying quartz watch movements--- ¬wouldn't you? and they're already under patent. I'm not sure; but I think patents only apply to unique me¬chanical devices and copyright applies to design."

"But you're not a lawyer, are you? They don't re¬quire that in the FBI anymore."

"I have a proposal for you," Starling said, opening her briefcase.

Barney was coming. She closed the briefcase again. She envied Barney' s enormous calm. His eyes read neg¬ative for dope and there was considerable intelligence behind them.

"Excuse me," Barney said. "If you've got a lot of papers to wrestle, there's a one-armed desk, a school desk, in the closet here that the shrinks use. Want it?"

School, image. Yes or no?

"May we talk now, Dr. Lecter?"

The doctor held up an open palm.

"Yes, Barney. Thank you."

Seated now and Barnet' safely away.

"Dr. Lecter, the Senator has a remarkable offer."

"I'll decide that. You spoke to her so soon?"

"Yes. She's not holding anything back. This is all she's got, so it's not a matter for bargaining. This is it, everything, one offer." She glanced up from her brief¬case.

Dr. Lecter, murderer of nine, had his fingers steepled beneath his nose and he was watching her. Behind his eyes was endless night.

"If you help us find Buffalo Bill in time to save Catherine Martin unharmed, you get the following: transfer to the Veteran's Administration hospital at Oneida Park, New York, to a cell with a view of the woods around the hospital. Maximum security measures still apply. You'll be asked to help evaluate written psychological tests on some federal inmates, though not neces¬sarily those sharing your own institution. You'll do the evaluations blind. No identities. You'll have reasonable access to books." She glanced up.

Silence can mock.

"The best thing, the remarkable thing: one week a year, you will leave the hospital and go here." She put a map in the food carrier. Dr. Letter did not pull it through.

"Plum Island," she continued. "Every afternoon of that week you can walk on the beach or swim in the ocean with no surveillance closer than seventy-five yards, but it'll be SWAT surveillance. That's it."

"If I decline?"

"Maybe you could hang some caf¨¦ curtains in there. It might help. We don't have anything to threaten you with, Dr. Lecter. What I've got is a way for you to see the daylight."

She didn't look at him. She -didn't want to match stares now. This was not a confrontation.

"Will Catherine Martin come and talk to me--- only about her captor--- if I decide to publish? Talk exclusively to me?"

"Yes. You can take that as a given."

"How do you know? Given by whom?"

"I'll bring her myself."

"If she'll come."

"We'll have to ask her first, won't we?"

He pulled the carrier through. "Plum Island."

"Look off the tip of Long Island, the north finger there."

"Plum Island. 'The Plum Island Animal Disease Center. (Federal, hoof and mouth disease research),' it says. Sounds charming."

"That's just part of the island. It has a nice beach and good quarters. The terns nest there in the spring."

"Terns." Dr. Letter sighed. He cocked his head slightly and touched the center of his red lip with his red tongue. "If we talk about this, Clarice, I have to have something on account. Quid pro quo. I tell you things, and you tell me."

"Go," Starling said.

She had to wait a full minute before he said, "A caterpillar becomes a pupa in a chrysalis. Then it emerges; comes out of its secret changing room as the beautiful imago. Do you know what an imago is, Cla¬rice?"

"An adult winged insect."

"But what else?"

She shook her head.

"It's a term from the dead religion of psychoanalysis. An imago is an image of the parent buried in the un¬conscious from infancy and bound with infantile affect. The word comes from the wax portrait busts of their ancestors the ancient Romans carried in funeral proces¬sions... Even the phlegmatic Crawford must see some significance in the insect chrysalis."

"Nothing to jump on except checking the entomol¬ogy journals' subscription lists against known sex of¬fenders in the descriptor index."

"First, let's drop Buffalo Bill. It's a misleading term and has nothing to do with the person you want. For convenience we'll call him Billy. I'll give you a precis of what I think. Ready?"

"Ready."

"The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. He's making himself a girl suit out of real girls. Hence the large victims--- he has to have things that fit. The number of victims suggests he may see it as a series of molts. He's doing this in a two-story house, did you find out why two stories?"

"For a while he was hanging them on the stairs."

"Correct."

"Dr. Lecter, there's no correlation that I ever saw between transsexualism and violence--- transsexuals are passive types, usually."

"That's true, Clarice. Sometimes you see a tendency to surgical addiction--- cosmetically, transsexuals are hard to satisfy--- but that's about all. Billy's not a real transsexual. You're very close, Clarice, to the way you re going to catch him, do you realize that?"

"No, Dr. Lecter."

"Good. Then you won't mind telling me what hap¬pened to you after your father's death."

Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk.

"I don't imagine the answer's in your papers, Cla¬rice."

"My mother kept us together for more than two years."

"Doing what?"

"Working as a motel maid in the daytime, cooking at a caf¨¦ at night."

"And then?"

"I went to my mother's cousin and her husband in Montana."

"Just you?"

"I was the oldest."

"The town did nothing for your family?"

"A check for five hundred dollars."

"Curious there was no insurance. Clarice, you said your father hit the shotgun slide on the door of his pickup."

"Yes."

"He didn't have a patrol car?"

"No."

"It happened at night."

"Yes."

"Didn't he have a pistol?"

"No."

"It happened at night."

"Yes."

"Didn't he have a pistol?"

"No."

"Clarice, he was working at night, in a pickup truck, armed only with a shotgun.... Tell me, did he wear a time clock on his belt by any chance? One of those things where they have keys screwed to posts all over town and you have to drive to them and stick them in your clock? So the town fathers know you weren't asleep. Tell me if he wore one, Clarice."

"Yes."

"He was a night watchman, wasn't he, Clarice, he wasn't a marshal at all. I'll know if you lie."

"The job description said night marshal."

"What happened to it?"

"What happened to what?"

"The time clock. What happened to it after your father was shot?"

"I don't remember."

"If you do remember, will you tell me?"

"Yes. Wait--- the mayor came to the hospital and asked my mother for the clock and the badge." She hadn't known she knew that. The mayor in his leisure suit and Navy surplus shoes. The cocksucker. "Quid pro quo, Dr. Lecter."

"Did you think for a second you'd made that up? No, if you'd made it up, it wouldn't sting. We were talking about transsexuals. You said violence and destructive aberrant behavior are not statistical correlatives of transsexualism. True. Do you remember what we said about anger expressed as lust, and lupus presenting as hives? Billy's not a transsexual, Clarice, but he thinks he is, he tries to be. He's tried to be a lot of things, I expect."

"You said that was close to the way we'd catch him."

"There are three major centers for transsexual surgery: Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center. I wouldn't be surprised if he's applied for sex reassignment at one or all of them and been denied."

"On what basis would they reject him, what would show up?"

"You're very quick, Clarice. The first reason would be criminal record. That disqualifies an applicant, un¬less the crime is relatively harmless and related to the gender-identity problem. Cross-dressing in public, something like that. If he lied successfully about a seri¬ous criminal record, then the personality inventories would get him."

"How?"

"You have to know how in order to sieve them, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you ask Dr. Bloom?"

"I'd rather ask you."

"What will you get out of this, Clarice, a promotion and a raise? What are you, a G-9? What do little G-9's get nowadays?"

"A key to the front door, for one thing. How would he show up on the diagnostics?"

"How did you like Montana, Clarice?"

"Montana's fine."

"How did you like your mother's cousin's husband?"

"We were different."

"How were they?"

"Worn out from work."

"Were there other children?'."

"No."

"Where did you live?"

"On a ranch."

"A sheep ranch?"

"Sheep and horses."

"How long were you there?"

"Seven months."

"How old were you?"

"Ten."

"Where did you go from there?"

"The Lutheran Home in Bozeman."

"Tell me the truth."

"I am telling you the truth."

"You're hopping around the truth. If you're tired, we could talk toward the end of the week. I'm rather bored myself. Or had you rather talk now?"

"Now, Dr. Lecter."

"All right. A child is sent away from her mother to a ranch in Montana. A sheep and horse ranch. Missing the mother, excited by the animals..." Dr. Lecter invited Starling with his open hands.

"It was great. I had my own room with an Indian rug on the floor. They let me ride a horse--- they led me around on this horse--- she couldn't see very well. There was something wrong with all the horses. Lame or sick. Some of them had been raised with children and they would, you know, nicker at me in the mornings when I went out to the school bus."

"But then?"

"I found something strange in the barn. They had a little tack room out there. I thought this thing was some kind of old helmet. When I got it down, it was stamped "W. W. Greener's Humane Horse Killer." It was sort of a bell-shaped metal cap and it had a place in the top to chamber a cartridge. Looked like about a .32."

"Did they feed out slaughter horses on this ranch, Clarice?"

"Yes, they did."

"Did they kill them at the ranch?"

"The glue and fertilizer ones they did. You can stack six in a truck if they're dead. The ones for dog food they hauled away alive."

"The one you rode around the yard?"

"We ran away together."

"How far did you get?"

"I got about as far as I'm going until you break down the diagnostics for me."

"Do you know the procedure for testing male appli¬cants for transsexual surgery?"

"No."

"It may help if you bring me a copy of the regimen from any of the centers, but to begin: the battery of tests usually includes Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, House-Tree-Person, Rorschach, Drawing of Self-Concept, Thematic Apperception, MMPI of course, and a couple of others--- the Jenkins, I think, that NYU developed. You need something you can see quickly, don't you? Don't you, Clarice?"

"That would be the best, something quick."

"Let's see... our hypothesis is we're looking for a male who will test differently from the way a true transsexual would test. All right--- on House-Tree-Per¬son, look for someone who didn't draw the female figure first. Male transsexuals almost always draw the female first and, typically, they pay a lot of attention to adornments on the females they draw. Their male figures are simple stereotypes--- there are some notable exceptions where they draw Mr. America--- but not much in between.

"Look for a house drawing without the rosy-future embellishments--- no baby carriage outside, no curtains, no flowers in the yard.

"You get two kinds of trees with real transsexuals¬--- flowing, copious willows and castration themes. The trees that are cut off by the edge of the drawing or the edge of the paper, the castration images, are full of life in the drawings of true transsexuals. Flowering and fruitful stumps. That's an important distinction. They're very unlike the frightened, dead, mutilated trees you see in drawings by people with mental disturbances. That's a good one--- Billy's tree will be frightful. Am I going too fast?"

"No, Dr. Lecter."

"On his drawing of himself; a transsexual will almost never draw himself naked. Don't be misled by a certain amount of paranoid ideation in the TAT cards--- that's fairly common among transsexual subjects who cross-¬dress a lot; oftentimes they've had bad experiences with the authorities. Shall I summarize?"

"Yes, I'd like a summary."

"You should try to obtain a list of people rejected from all three gender-reassignment centers. Check first the ones rejected for criminal record--- and among those look hard at the burglars. Among those who tried to conceal criminal records, look for severe childhood dis¬turbances associated with violence. Possibly intern¬ment in childhood. Then go to the tests. You're looking for a white male, probably under thirty-five and siz¬able. He's not a transsexual, Clarice. He just thinks he is, and he's puzzled and angry because they won't help him. That's all I want to say, I think, until I've read the case. You will leave it with me."

"Yes."

"And the pictures."

"They're included."

"Then you'd better run with what you have, Clarice, and we'll see how you do."

"I need to know how you---"

"No. Don't be grabby or we'll discuss it next week. Come back when you've made some progress. Or not. And Clarice?"

"Yes."

"Next time you'll tell me two things. What happened with the horse is one. The other thing I wonder is... how do you manage your rage?"

Alonzo came for her. She held her notes against her chest, walking head bent, trying to hold it all in her mind. Eager for the outside air, she didn't even glance toward Chilton's office as she hurried out of the hospi¬tal.

Dr. Chilton's light was on. You could see it under the door.