Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"Depends if it's postmortem."

"If it is?"

"Then he's got a closed truck or a van or a station wagon, something long."

"Why?"

"Because the burn's across the back of her calf."

They were at Tenth and Pennsylvania, in front of the new FBI headquarters that nobody ever refers to as the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

"Jeff, you can let me out here," Crawford said. "Right here, don't go underneath. Stay in the car, Jeff, just pop the trunk. Come show me, Starling."

She got out with Crawford while he retrieved his datafax and briefcase from the luggage compartment.

"He hauled the body in something big enough for the body to be stretched out on its back," Starling said. "That's the only way the back of her calf would rest on the floor over the exhaust pipe. In a car trunk like this, she'd be curled up on her side and--"

"Yeah, that's how I see it," Crawford said.

She realized then that he'd gotten her out of the car so he could speak with her privately.

"When I told that deputy he and I shouldn't talk in front of a woman, that burned you, didn't it?"

"Sure."

"It was just smoke. I wanted to get him by himself."

"I know that."

"Okay." Crawford slammed the trunk and turned away.

Starling couldn't let it go.

"It matters, Mr. Crawford."

He was turning back to her, laden with his fax machine and briefcase, and she had his full attention.

"Those cops know who you are," she said. "They look at you to see how to act." She stood steady, shrugged her shoulders, opened her palms. There it was, it was true.

Crawford performed a measurement on his cold scales.

"Duly noted, Starling. Now get on with the bug."

"Yes sir."

She watched him walk away, a middle-aged man laden with cases and rumpled from flying, his cuffs muddy from the riverbank, going home to what he did at home.

She would have killed for him then. That was one of Crawford's great talent

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History had been closed for hours, but Crawford had called ahead and a guard waited to let Clarice Starling in the Constitution Avenue entrance.

The lights were dimmed in the closed museum and the air was still. Only the colossal figure of a South Seas chieftain facing the entrance stood tall enough for the weak ceiling light to shine on his face.

Starling's guide was a big black man in the neat turnout of the Smithsonian guards. She thought he resembled the chieftain as he raised his face to the elevator lights. There was a moment's relief in her idle fancy, like rubbing a cramp.

The second level above the great stuffed elephant, a vast floor closed to the public, is shared by the departments of Anthropology and Entomology. The anthropologists call it the fourth floor. The entomologists contend it is the third. A few scientists from Agriculture say they have proof that it is the sixth. Each faction has a case in the old building with its additions and subdivisions.

Starling followed the guard into a dim maze of corridors walled high with wooden cases of anthropological specimens. Only the small labels revealed their contents.

"Thousands of people in these boxes," the guard said. "Forty thousand specimens."

He found office numbers with his flashlight and trailed the light over the labels as they went along.

Dyak baby carriers and ceremonial skulls gave way to Aphids, and they left Man for the older and more orderly world of Insects. Now the corridor was walled with big metal boxes painted pale green.

"Thirty million insects-- and the spiders on top of that. Don't lump the spiders in with the insects," the guard advised. "Spider people jump all over you about that. There, the office that's lit. Don't try to come out by yourself. If they don't say they'll bring you down, call me at this extension, it's the guard office. I'll come get you." He gave her a card and left her.

She was in the heart of Entomology, on a rotunda gallery high above the great stuffed elephant. There was the office with the lights on and the door open.

"Time, Pilch!" A man's voice, shrill with excitement. "Let's go here. Time!"

Starling stopped in the doorway. Two men sat at a laboratory table playing chess. Both were about thirty, one black-haired and lean, the other pudgy with wiry red hair. They appeared to be engrossed in the chessboard. If they noticed Starling, they gave no sign. If they noticed the enormous rhinoceros beetle slowly making its way across the board, weaving among the chessmen, they gave no sign of that either.

Then the beetle crossed the edge of the board.

"Time, Roden," the lean one said instantly.

The pudgy one moved his bishop and immediately turned the beetle around and started it trudging back the other way.

"If the beetle just cuts across the corner, is time up then?" Starling asked.

"Of course time's up then," the pudgy one said loudly, without looking up. "Of course it's up then. How do you play? Do you make him cross the whole board? Who do you play against, a sloth?"

"I have the specimen Special Agent Crawford called about."

"I can't imagine why we didn't hear your siren," the pudgy one said. "We're waiting all night here to identify a bug for the FBI. Bugs're all we do. Nobody said anything about Special Agent Crawford's specimen . He should show his specimen privately to his family doctor. Time, Pitch!"

"I'd love to catch your whole routine another time," Starling said, "'but this is urgent, so let's do it now. Time, Pitch."

The black-haired one looked around at her, saw her leaning against the doorframe with her briefcase. He put the beetle on some rotten wood in a box and covered it with a lettuce leaf.

When he got up, he was tall.

"I'm Noble Pilcher," he said. "That's Albert Roden. You need an insect identified? We're happy to help you." Pilcher had a long friendly face, but his black eyes were a little witchy and too close together, and one of them had a slight cast that made it catch the light independently. He did not offer to shake hands. "You are…?"

"Clarice Starling."

"Let's see what you've got."

Pilcher held the small jar to the light.

Roden came to look. "Where did you find it? Did you kill it with your gun ? Did you see its mommy ?"

It occurred to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his Jaw.

"Shhh, " Pilcher said. "Tell us where you found it. Was it attached to anything-- a twig or a leaf-- or was it in the soil?"

"I see," Starling said. "Nobody's talked to you."

"The Chairman asked us to stay late and identify a bug for the FBI," Pilcher said.

" Told us," Roden said. " Told us to stay late."

"We do it all the time for Customs and the Department of Agriculture," Pilcher said.

"But not in the middle of the night," Roden said.

"I need to tell you a couple of things involving a criminal case," Starling said. "I'm allowed to do that if you'll keep it in confidence until the case is resolved. It's important. It means some lives, and I'm not just saying that. Dr. Roden, can you tell me seriously that you'll respect a confidence?"

"I'm not a doctor. Do I have to sign anything?"

"Not if your word's any good. You'll have to sign for the specimen if you need to keep it, that's all."

"Of course I'll help you. I'm not uncaring."

"Dr. Pilcher?"

"That's true," Pilcher said. "He's not uncaring."

"Confidence?"

"I won't tell."

"Pilch isn't a doctor yet either," Roden said. "We're on an equal educational footing. But notice how he allowed you to call him that." Roden placed the tip of his forefinger against his chin, as though pointing to his judicious expression. "Give us all the details. What might seem irrelevant to you could be vital information to an expert."