Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"Mr. Crawford, are you in the glue?"

"I'm directed to take compassionate leave," Crawford said. "There's a new task force of FBI, DEA; and 'additional elements' from the Attorney General's office-- meaning Krendler."

"Who's boss?"

"Officially, FBI Assistant Director John Golby. Let's say he and I are in close consultation. John's a good man. What about you, are you in the glue?"

"Krendler told me to turn in my ID and the roscoe and report back to school."

"That was all he did before your visit to Lecter. Starling, he sent a rocket this afternoon to the Office of Professional Responsibility. It was a request 'without prejudice' that the Academy suspend you pending a reevaluation of your fitness for the service. It's a chickenshit backshot. The Chief Gunny, John Brigham, saw it in the faculty meeting at Quantico a little while ago. He gave 'em an earful and got on the horn to me."

"How bad is that?"

"You're entitled to a hearing. I'll vouch for your fitness and that'll be enough. But if you spend any more time away, you'll definitely be recycled, regardless of any finding at a hearing. Do you know what happens when you're recycled?"

"Sure, you're sent back to the regional office that recruited you. You get to file reports and make coffee until you get another spot in a class."

"I can promise you a place in a later class, but I can't keep them from recycling you if you miss the time."

"So I go back to school and stop working on this, or…"

"Yeah."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Your job was Lecter. You did it. I'm not asking you to take a recycle. It could cost you, maybe half a year, maybe more."

"What about Catherine Martin?"

"He's had her almost forty-eight hours-- be forty-eight hours at midnight. If we don't catch him he'll probably do her tomorrow or the next day, if it's like last time."

"Lecter's not all we had."

"They got six William Rubins so far, all with priors of one kind or another. None of 'em look like much. No Billy Rubins on the bug journal subscription lists. The Knifemakers Guild knows about five cases of ivory anthrax in the last ten years. We've got a couple of those left to check. What else? Klaus hasn't been identified-- yet. Interpol reports a fugitive warrant outstanding in Marseilles for a Norwegian merchant seaman, a 'Klaus Bjetland,' however you say it. Norway 's looking for his dental records to send. If we get anything from the clinics, and you've got the time, you can help with it. Starling?"

"Yes, Mr. Crawford?"

"Go back to school."

"If you didn't want me to chase him you shouldn't have taken me in that funeral home, Mr. Crawford."

"No," Crawford said. "I suppose I shouldn't. But then we wouldn't have the insect. You don't turn in your roscoe. Quantico 's safe enough, but you'll be armed any time you're off the base at Quantico until Lecter's caught or dead."

"What about you? He hates you. I mean he's given this some thought."

" Lot of people have, Starling, in a lot of jails. One of these days he might get around to it, but he's way too busy now. It's sweet to be out and he's not ready to waste it that way. And this place is safer than it looks."

The phone in Crawford's pocket buzzed. The one on the desk purred and blinked. He listened for a few moments, said "Okay," and hung up.

"They found the ambulance in the underground garage at the Memphis airport." He shook his head. "No good. Crew was in the back. Dead, both of them."

Crawford took off his glasses, rummaged for his handkerchief to polish them.

"Starling, the Smithsonian called Burroughs asking for you. The Pilcher fellow: They're pretty close to finishing up on the bug. I want you to write a 302 on that and sign it for the permanent file. You found the bug and followed up on it and I want the record to say so. You up to it?"

Starling was as tired as she had ever been. "Sure," she said.

"Leave your car at the garage, and Jeff'll drive you back to Quantico when you're through."

On the steps she turned her face toward the lighted, curtained windows where the nurse kept watch, and then looked back at Crawford.

"I'm thinking about you both, Mr. Crawford."

"Thank you, Starling," he said.

"Officer Starling, Dr. Pilcher said he'd meet you in the Insect Zoo. I'll take you over there," the guard said.

To reach the Insect Zoo from the Constitution Avenue side of the museum, you must take the elevator one level above the great stuffed elephant and cross a vast floor devoted to the study of man.

Tiers of skulls were first, rising and spreading, representing the explosion of human population since the time of Christ.

Starling and the guard moved in a dim landscape peopled with figures illustrating human origin and variation. Here were displays of ritual-- tattoos, bound feet, tooth modification, Peruvian surgery, mummification.

"Did you ever see Wilhelm von Ellenbogen?" the guard asked, shining his light into a case.

"I don't believe I have," Starling said without slowing her pace.

"You should come sometime when the lights are up and take a look at him. Buried him in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century? Turned right to soap when the ground water hit him."

The Insect Zoo is a large room, dim now and loud with chirps and whirs. Cages and cases of live insects fill it. Children particularly like the zoo and troop through it all day. At night, left to themselves, the insects are busy. A few of the cases were lit with red, and the fire exit signs burned fiercely red in the dim room.

"Dr. Pilcher?" the guard called from the door.

"Here," Pilcher said, holding a penlight up as a beacon.

"Will you bring this lady out?"

"Yes, thank you, Officer."

Starling took her own small flashlight out of her purse and found the switch already on, the batteries dead. The flash of anger she felt reminded her that she was tired and she had to bear down.

"Hello, Officer Starling."

"Dr. Pilcher."

"How about 'Professor Pilcher'?"

"Are you a professor?"

"No, but I'm not a doctor either. What I am is glad to see you. Want to look at some bugs?"

"Sure. Where's Dr. Roden?"

"He made most of the progress over the last two nights with chaetaxy and finally he had to crash. Did you see the bug before we started on it?"

"No."

"It was just mush, really."

"But you got it, you figured it out."

"Yep. Just now." He stopped at a mesh cage. "First let me show you a moth like the one you brought in Monday. This is not exactly the same as yours, but the same family, an owlet." The beam of his flashlight found the large sheeny blue moth sitting on a small branch, its wings folded, Pilcher blew air at it and instantly the fierce face of an owl appeared as the moth flared the undersides of its wings at them, the eye-spots on the wings glaring like the last sight a rat ever sees. "This one's Caligo beltrao-- fairly common. But with this Klaus specimen, you're talking some heavy moths. Come on."

At the end of the room was a case set back in a niche with a rail in front of it. The case was beyond the reach of children and it was covered with a cloth. A small humidifier hummed beside it.

"We keep it behind glass to protect people's fingers-- it can fight. It likes the damp too, and glass keeps the humidity in." Pilcher lifted the cage carefully by its handles and moved it to the front of the niche. He lifted off the cover and turned on a small light above the cage.

"This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on-- we're hoping she'll lay."

The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes.