Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

Lamar, a lean funeral home assistant with a whiskey bloom in the middle of his face, came in while she was doing it. "You must of been a manicurist one time," he said.

They were glad to see the young woman had no fingernail marks in her palms-- an indication that, like the others, she had died before anything else was done to her.

"You want to print her facedown, Starling?" Crawford said.

"Be easier."

"Let's do teeth first, and then Lamar can help us turn her over."

"Just pictures, or a chart?" Starling attached the dental kit to the front of the fingerprint camera, privately relieved that all the parts were in the bag.

"Just pictures," Crawford said. "A chart can throw you off without X rays. We can eliminate a couple of missing women with the pictures."

Lamar was very gentle with his organist's hands, opening the young woman's mouth at Starling's direction and retracting her lips while Starling placed the one-to-one Polaroid against the face to get details of the front teeth. That part was easy, but she had to shit the molars with a palatal reflector, watching from the side for the glow through the cheek to be sure the strobe around the lens was lighting the inside of the mouth. She had only seen it done in a forensics class.

Starling watched the first Polaroid print of the molars develop, adjusted the lightness control and tried again. This print was better. This one was very good.

"She's got something in her throat," Starling said.

Crawford looked at the picture. It showed a dark cylindrical object just behind the soft palate. "Give me the flashlight."

"When a body comes out of the water, a lot of times there's like leaves and things in the mouth," Lamar said, helping Crawford to look.

Starling took some forceps out of her bag. She looked at Crawford across the body. He nodded. It only took her a second to get it.

"What is it, some kind of seed pod?" Crawford said.

"Nawsir, that's a bug cocoon," Lamar said. He was right.

Starling put it in a jar.

"You might want the county agent to look at that," Lamar said.

Facedown, the body was easy to fingerprint. Starling had been prepared for the worst-- but none of the tedious and delicate injection methods or finger stalls were necessary. She took the prints on thin card stock held in a device shaped like a shoehorn. She did a set of plantar prints as well, in case they had only baby footprints from a hospital for reference.

Two triangular pieces of skin were missing from high on the shoulders. Starling took pictures.

"Measure too," Crawford said. "He cut the girl from Akron when he slit her clothes off, not much more than a scratch, but it matched the cut up the back of her blouse when they found it beside the road. This is something new, though. I haven't seen this."

"Looks like a burn across the back of her calf," Starling said.

"Old people gets those a lot," Lamar said.

"What?" Crawford said.

"I SAID OLD PEOPLE GETS THOSE A LOT."

"I heard you fine, I want you to explain it. What about old people?"

"Old people pass away with a heating pad on them, and when they're dead it burns them, even when it's not all that hot. You burn under a heating pad when you're dead. No circulation under it."

"We'll ask the pathologist at Claxton to test it, and see if it's postmortem," Crawford said to Starling.

"Car muffler, most likely," Lamar said.

"What?"

"CAR MUFFL-- car muffler. One time Billy Petrie got shot to death and they dumped him in the trunk of his car? His wife drove the car around two or three days looking for him. When they brought him in here, the muffler had got hot under the car trunk and burned him just like that, only across his hip," Lamar said. "I can't put groceries in the trunk of my car for it melting the ice cream."

"That's a good thought, Lamar, I wish you worked for me," Crawford said. "Do you know the fellows that found her in the river?"

"Jabbo Franklin and his brother, Bubba."

"What do they do?"

"Fight at the Moose, make fun of people that's not bothering them-- someone just comes in the Moose after a simple drink, worn out from looking at the bereaved all day, and it's 'Set down there, Lamar, and play "Filipino Baby." ' Make a person play 'Filipino Baby' over and over on that sticky old bar piano. That's what Jabbo likes. 'Well, make up some damn words if you don't know it,' he says, 'and make the damn thing rhyme this time.' He gets a check from the Veterans and goes to dry out at the VA around Christmas. I been looking for him on this table for fifteen years."

"We'll need serotonin tests on the fishhook punctures," Crawford said. "I'm sending the pathologist a note."

"Them hooks are too close together," Lamar said.

"What did you say?"

"The Franklins was running a trotline with the hooks too close together. It's a violation. That's prob'ly why they didn't call it in until this morning."

"The sheriff said they were duck hunters."

"I expect they did tell him that," Lamar said. "They'll tell you they wrestled Duke Keomuka in Honolulu one time too, tag team with Satellite Monroe. You can believe that too, if you feel like it. Grab a croaker sack and they'll take you on a snipe hunt too, if you favor snipe. Give you a glass of billiards with it."

"What do you think happened, Lamar?"

"The Franklins was running this trotline, it's their trotline with these unlawful hooks, and they was pulling it up to see if they had any fish."

"Why do you think so?"

"This lady's not near ready to float."

"No."

"Then if they hadna been pulling up on the trotline they never would have found her. They prob'ly went off scared and finally called in. I expect you'll want the game warden in on this."

"I expect so," Crawford said.

"Lots of times they've got a crank telephone behind the seat in their Ramcharger, that's a big fine right there, if you don't have to go to the pen."

Crawford raised his eyebrows.

"To telephone fish with," Starling said. "Stun the fish with electric current when you hang the wires in the water and turn the crank. They come to the top and you just dip 'em out."

"Right," Lamar said, "are you from around here?"

"They do it lots of places," Starling said.

Starling felt the urge to say something before they zipped up the bag, to make a gesture or express some kind of commitment. In the end, she just shook her head and got busy packing the samples into her case.

It was different with the body and problem out of sight. In this slack moment, what she'd been doing came in on her. Starling stripped off her gloves and turned the water on in the sink. With her back to the room, she ran water over her wrists. The water in the pipes wasn't all that cool. Lamar, watching, disappeared into the hall. He came back from the Coke machine with an ice-cold can of soda, unopened, and offered it to her.

"No, thanks," Starling said. "I don't believe I'll have one."

"No, hold it under your neck there," Lamar said, "and on that little bump at the back of your head. Cold'll make you feel better. It does me."

By the time Starling had finished taping the memo to the pathologist across the zipper of the body bag, Crawford's fingerprint transmitter was clicking on the office desk.

Finding this victim so soon after the crime was a lucky break. Crawford was determined to identify her quickly and start a sweep around her home for witnesses to the abduction. His method was a lot of trouble to everyone, but it was fast.

Crawford carried a Litton Policefax fingerprint transmitter. Unlike federal-issue facsimile machines, the Policefax is compatible with most big-city police department systems. The fingerprint card Starling had assembled was barely dry.

"Load it, Starling, you've got the nimble fingers."