Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"Yes, I am," Starling said. "I've questioned him before,"

"You know the rules? Don't pass the barrier."

"Absolutely."

The only color in the room was the police traffic barrier, a brightly striped sawhorse in orange and yellow mounted with round yellow flashers, now turned off. It stood on the polished floor five feet in front of the cell door. On a coat tree nearby hung the doctor's things-- the hockey mask and something Starling had never seen before, a Kansas gallows vest. Made of heavy leather, with double-locking wrist shackles at the waist and buckles in the back, it may be the most infallible restraint garment in the world. The mask and the black vest suspended by its nape from the coat tree made a disturbing composition against the white wall.

Starling could see Dr. Lecter as she approached the cell. He was reading at a small table bolted to the floor. His back was to the door. He had a number of books and the copy of the running file on Buffalo Bill she had given him in Baltimore. A small cassette player was chained to the table leg. How strange to see him outside the asylum.

Starling had seen cells like this before, as a child. They were prefabricated by a St. Louis company around the turn of the century, and no one has ever built them better-- a tempered steel modular cage that turns any room into a cell. The floor was sheet steel laid over bars, and the walls and ceiling of cold-forged bars completely lined the room. There was no window. The cell was spotlessly white and brightly lit. A flimsy paper screen stood in front of the toilet.

These white bars ribbed the walls. Dr. Lecter had a sleek dark head.

He's a cemetery mink. He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart

She blinked it away.

"Good morning, Clarice," he said without turning around. He finished his page, marked his place and spun in his chair to face her, his forearms on the chair back, his chin resting on them. "Dumas tells us that the addition of a crow to bouillon in the fall, when the crow has fattened on juniper berries, greatly improves the color and flavor of stock. How do you like it in the soup, Clarice?"

"I thought you might want your drawings, the stuff from your cell, just until you get your view."

"How thoughtful. Dr. Chilton's euphoric about you and Jack Crawford being put off the case. Or did they send you in for one last wheedle?"

The officer on suicide watch had strolled back to talk to Officer Pembry at the desk. Starling hoped they couldn't hear.

"They didn't send me. I just came."

"People will say we're in love. Don't you want to ask about Billy Rubin, Clarice?,"

"Dr. Lecter, without in any way… impugning what you've told Senator Martin, would you advise me to go on with your idea about--"

"Impugning-- I love it. I wouldn't advise you at all. You tried to fool me, Clarice. Do you think I'm playing with these people?"

"I think you were telling me the truth."

"Pity you tried to fool me, isn't it?" Dr. Letter's face sank behind his arms until only his eyes were visible. "Pity Catherine Martin won't ever see the sun again. The sun's a mattress fire her God died in, Clarice."

"Pity you have to pander now and lick a few tears when you can," Starling said. "It's a pity we didn't get to finish what we were talking about. Your idea of the imago, the structure of it, had a kind of… elegance that's hard to get away from. Now it's like a ruin, half an arch standing there."

"Half an arch won't stand. Speaking of arches, will they still let you pound a beat, Clarice? Did they take your badge?"

"No."

"What's that under your jacket, a watchman's clock just like Dad's?"

"No, that's a speedloader."

"So you go around armed?"

"Yes."

"Then you should let your jacket out. Do you sew at all?"

"Yes."

"Did you make that costume?"

"No. Dr. Lecter, you find out everything. You couldn't have talked intimately with this 'Billy Rubin' and come out knowing so little about him."

"You think not?"

"If you met him, you know everything. But today you happened to remember just one detail. He'd had elephant ivory anthrax. You should have seen them jump when Atlanta said it's a disease of knifemakers. They ate it up, just like you knew they would. You should have gotten a suite at the Peabody for that. Dr. Lecter, if you met him you know about him. I think maybe you didn't meet him and Raspail told you about him. Secondhand stuff wouldn't sell as well to Senator Martin, would it?"

Starling took a quick look over her shoulder. One of the officers was showing the other something in Guns amp; Ammo magazine. "You had more to tell me in Baltimore, Dr. Lecter. I believe that stuff was valid. Tell me the rest."

"I've read the cases, Clarice, have you? Everything you need to know to find him is right there, if you're paying attention. Even Inspector Emeritus Crawford should have figured it out. Incidentally, did you read Crawford's stupefying speech last year to the National Police Academy? Spouting Marcus Aurelius on duty and honor and fortitude-- we'll see what kind of a Stoic Crawford is when Bella bites the big one. He copies his philosophy out of Bartlett's Familiar , I think. If he understood Marcus Aurelius, he might solve his case."

"Tell me how."

"When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can't read, Clarice. The Emperor counsels simplicity: First principles Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its causal nature?"

"That doesn't mean anything to me."

"What does he do, the man you want?"

"He kills--"

"Ah--" he said sharply, averting his face for a moment from her wrongheadedness. "That's incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing?"

"Anger, social resentment, sexual frus--"

"No."

"What, then?"

"He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It's his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer."

"No. We just--"

"No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don't your eyes move over things?"

"All right, then tell me how--"

"It's your turn to tell me , Clarice. You don't have any beach vacations at the Hoof and Mouth Disease Station to offer me anymore. It's strictly quid pro quo from here on out. I have to be careful doing business with you. Tell me, Clarice."

"Tell you what?"

"The two things you owe me from before. What happened to you and the horse, and what you do with your anger."

"Dr. Lecter, when there's time I'll--"

"We don't reckon time the same way, Clarice. This is all the time you'll ever have."

"Later, listen, I'll--"

"I'll listen now. Two years after your father's death, your mother sent you to live with her cousin and her husband on a ranch in Montana. You were ten years old. You discovered they fed out slaughter horses. You ran away with a horse that couldn't see very well. And?"

"--It was summer and we could sleep out. We got as far as Bozeman by a back road."

"Did the horse have a name?"

"Probably, but they don't-- you don't find that out when you're feeding out slaughter horses. I called her Hannah, that seemed like a good name."

"Were you leading her or riding?"

"Some of both. I had to lead her up beside a fence to climb on."

"You rode and walked to Bozeman."

"There was a livery stable, dude ranch, riding academy sort of thing just outside of town. I tried to see about them keeping her. It was twenty dollars a week in the corral. More for a stall. They could tell right off she couldn't see. I said okay, I'll lead her around. Little kids can sit on her and I'll lead her around while their parents are, you know, regular riding. I can stay right here and muck out stalls. One of them, the man, agreed to everything I said while his wife called the sheriff."