Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"He's comatose but the vital signs are good. He's got good pressure. One-thirty over ninety. Yeah, ninety. Pulse eighty-five. He's got severe facial cuts with elevated flaps, one eye enucleated. I've got pressure on the face and an airway in place. Possible gunshot in the head, I can't tell."

Behind him on the stretcher, the balled and bloody fists relax inside the waistband. The right hand slides out, finds the buckle on the strap across the chest.

"I'm scared to put much pressure on the head-- he showed some convulsive movement before we put him on the gurney. Yeah, got him in the Fowler position."

Behind the young man, the hand gripped the surgical bandage and wiped out the eyes.

The attendant heard the airway hiss close behind him, turned and saw the bloody face in his, did not see the pistol descending and it caught him hard over the ear.

The ambulance slowing to a stop in traffic on the six-lane freeway, drivers behind it confused and honking, hesitant to pull around an emergency vehicle. Two small pops like backfires in the traffic and the ambulance started up again, weaving, straightening out, moving to the right lane.

The airport exit coming up. The ambulance piddled along in the right lane, various emergency lights going on and off on the outside of it, wipers on and off, then the siren wailing down, starting up, wailing down to silence and the flashing lights going off. The ambulance proceeding quietly, taking the exit to Memphis International Airport, the beautiful building floodlit in the winter evening. It took the curving drive as far as the automated gates to the vast underground parking field. A bloody hand came out to take a ticket. And the ambulance disappeared down the tunnel to the parking field beneath the ground.

Normally, Clarice Starling would have been curious to see Crawford's house in Arlington, but the bulletin on the car radio about Dr. Lecter's escape knocked all that out of her.

Lips numb and scalp prickling, she drove by rote, saw the neat 1950s ranch house without looking at it, and only wondered dimly if the lit, curtained windows on the left were where Bella was lying. The doorbell seemed too loud.

Crawford opened the door on the second ring. He wore a baggy cardigan and he was talking on a wireless phone. "Copley in Memphis," he said. Motioning for her to follow, he led her through the house, grunting into the telephone as he went.

In the kitchen, a nurse took a tiny bottle from the refrigerator and held it to the light. When Crawford raised his eyebrows to the nurse, she shook her head, she didn't need him.

He took Starling to his study, down three steps into what was clearly a converted double garage. There was good space here, a sofa and chairs, and on the cluttered desk a computer terminal glowed green beside an antique astrolabe. The rug felt as though it was laid on concrete. Crawford waved her to a seat.

He put his hand over the receiver. "Starling, this is baloney, but did you hand Lecter anything at all in Memphis?"

"No."

"No object."

"Nothing."

"You took him the drawings and stuff from his cell."

"I never gave it to him. The stuff's still in my bag. He gave me the file. That's all that passed between us."

Crawford tucked the phone under his jowl. "Copley, that's unmitigated bullshit. I want you to step on that bastard and do it now. Straight to the chief, straight to the TBI. See the hotline's posted with the rest. Burroughs is on it. Yes." He turned off the phone and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Want some coffee, Starling? Coke?"

"What was that about handing things to Dr. Lecter?"

"Chilton's saying you must have given Lecter something he used to slip the ratchet on the cuffs. You didn't do it on purpose, he says-- it was just ignorance." Sometimes Crawford had angry little turtle-eyes. He watched how she took it. "Did Chilton try to snap your garters, Starling? Is that what's the matter with him?"

"Maybe. I'll take black with sugar, please."

While he was in the kitchen, she took deep breaths and looked around the room. If you live in a dormitory or a barracks, it's comforting to be in a home. Even with the ground shaking under Starling, her sense of the Crawfords' lives in this house helped her.

Crawford was coming, careful down the steps in his bifocals, carrying the cups. He was half an inch shorter in his moccasins. When Starling stood to take her coffee, their eyes were almost level. He smelled like soap, and his hair looked fluffy and gray.

"Copley said they haven't found the ambulance yet. Police barracks are turning out all over the South."

She shook her head. "I don't know any details. The radio just had the bulletin-- Dr. Lecter killed two policemen and got away."

"Two corrections officers." Crawford punched up the crawling text on his computer screen. "Names were Boyle and Pembry. You deal with them?"

She nodded. "They… put me out of the lockup. They were okay about it." Pembry coming around Chilton, uncomfortable, determined, but country-courteous. Come on with me, now, he said. He had liver spots on his hands and forehead. Dead now, pale beneath his spots.

Suddenly Starling had to put her coffee down. She filled her lungs deep and looked at the ceiling for a moment. "How'd he do it?"

"He got away in an ambulance, Copley said. We'll go into it. How did you make out with the blotter acid?"

Starling had spent the late afternoon and early evening walking the sheet of Plutos through Scientific Analysis on Krendler's orders. "Nothing. They're trying the DEA files for a batch-match, but the stuff's ten years old. Documents may do better with the printing than DEA can do with the dope."

"But it was blotter acid."

"Yes. Howd he do it, Mr. Crawford?"

"Want to know?"

She nodded.

"Then I'll tell you. They loaded Lecter into an ambulance by mistake. They thought he was Pembry, badly injured."

"Did he have on Pembry's uniform? They were about the same size."

"He put on Pembry's uniform and part of Pembry's face. And about a pound off Boyle, too. He wrapped Pembry's body in the waterproof mattress cover and the sheets from his cell to keep it from dripping and stuffed it on top of the elevator. He put on the uniform, got himself, fixed up, laid on the floor and fired shots into the ceiling to start the stampede. I don't know what he did with the gun, stuffed it down the back of his pants, maybe. The ambulance comes, cops everywhere with their guns out. The ambulance crew came in fast and did what they're trained to do under fire-- they stuffed in an airway, slapped a bandage over the worst of it, pressure to stop bleeding, and hauled out of there. They did their job. The ambulance never made it to the hospital. The police are still looking for it. I don't feel good about those medics. Copley said they're playing the dispatcher's tapes. The ambulances were called a couple of times. They think Lecter called the ambulances himself before he fired the shots, so he wouldn't have to lie around too long. Dr. Lecter likes his fun."

Starling had never heard the bitter snarl in Crawford's voice before. Because she associated bitter with weak, it frightened her.

"This escape doesn't mean Dr. Lecter was lying," Starling said. "Sure, he was lying to somebody-- us or Senator Martin-- but maybe he wasn't lying to both of us. He told Senator Martin it was Billy Rubin and claimed that's all he knew. He told me it was somebody with delusions of being a transsexual. About the last thing he said to me was, 'Why not finish the arch?' He was talking about following the sex-change theory that--"

"I know, I saw your summary. There's nowhere to go with that until we get names from the clinics. Alan Bloom's gone personally to the department heads. They say they're looking. I have to believe it."