Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

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 crucifixions 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 mechanical devices and copyright applies to design."

"But you're not a lawyer, are you? They don't require 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 negative 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 briefcase.

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 necessarily 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 café 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, Clarice?"

"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 unconscious from infancy and bound with infantile affect. The word comes from the wax portrait busts of their ancestors the ancient Romans carried in funeral processions… Even the phlegmatic Crawford must see some significance in the insect chrysalis."

"Nothing to jump on except checking the entomology journals' subscription lists against known sex offenders 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 happened 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, Clarice."

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

"Doing what?"

"Working as a motel maid in the daytime, cooking at a café 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?"