Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

Starling felt she had to try for more information from Lecter. If she already had the appointment, maybe Crawford would let her return to the asylum. She dialed Dr. Chilton's number, but she never got past his secretary.

"Dr. Chilton is with the coroner and the assistant district attorney," the woman said. "He's already spoken to your supervisor and he has nothing to say to you. Good-bye."

"Your friend Miggs is dead," Crawford said. "Did you tell me everything, Starling?" Crawford's tired face was as sensitive to signals as the dished ruff of an owl, and as free of mercy.

"How?" She felt numb and she had to handle it.

"Swallowed his tongue sometime before daylight. Letter suggested it to him, Chilton thinks. The overnight orderly -heard Lecter talking softly to Miggs. Lecter knew a lot about Miggs. He talked to him for a little while, but the overnight couldn't hear what Lecter said. Miggs was crying for a while, and then he stopped. Did you tell me everything, Starling?"

"Yes sir. Between the report and my memo, there's everything, almost verbatim."

"Chilton called up to complain about you…" Crawford waited, and seemed pleased when she wouldn't ask. "I told him I found your behavior satisfactory. Chilton's trying to forestall a civil rights investigation."

"Will there be one?"

"Sure, if Miggs' family wants it. Civil Rights Division will do probably eight thousand this year. They'll be glad to add Miggs to the list." Crawford studied her. "You okay?"

"I don't know how to feel about it."

"You don't have to feel any particular way about it. Lecter did it to amuse himself. He knows they can't really touch him for it, so why not? Chilton takes his books and his toilet seat for a while is all, and he doesn't get any Jell-O." Crawford laced his fingers over his stomach and compared his thumbs. "Lecter asked you about me, didn't he?"

"He asked if you were busy. I said yes."

"That's all? You didn't leave out anything personal because I wouldn't want to see it?"

"No. He said you were a Stoic, but I put that in."

"Yes, you did. Nothing else?"

"No, I didn't leave anything out. You don't think I traded some kind of gossip, and that's why he talked to me."

"No."

"I don't know anything personal about you, and if I did I wouldn't discuss it. If you've got a problem believing that, let's get it straight now."

"I'm satisfied. Next item. "

"You thought something , or--"

"Proceed to the next item, Starling."

"Lecter s hint about Raspail's car is a dead end. It was mashed into a cube four months ago in Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas, and sold for recycling. Maybe if I go back in and talk to him, he'll tell me more."

"You've exhausted the lead?"

"Yes."

"Why do you think the car Raspail drove was his only car?"

"It was the only one registered, he was single, I assumed--"

"Aha, hold it." Crawford's forefinger pointed to some principle invisible in the air between them. "You assumed. You assumed , Starling. Look here." Crawford wrote assume on a legal pad. Several of Starling's instnictors had picked this up from Crawford and used it, but Starling didn't reveal that she'd seen it before.

Crawford began to underline: "If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass out of u and me both." He leaned back, pleased: "Raspail collected cars, did you know that?"

"No, does the estate still have them?"

"I don't know. Do you think you could manage to find out?"

"Yes, I can."

"Where would you start?"

"His executor."

"A lawyer in Baltimore, a Chinese, I seem to remember," Crawford said.

"Everett Yow," Starling said: "He's in the Baltimore phone book."

"Have you given any thought to the question of a warrant to search Raspail's car?"

Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the know-it-all caterpillar in Lewis Carroll.

Starling didn't dare give it back, much. "Since Raspail is deceased and riot suspected of anything, if we have permission of his executor to search the car, then it is a valid search, and the fruit admissible evidence in other matters at law," she recited.

"Precisely," Crawford said. "Tell you what: I'll advise the Baltimore field office you'll be up there. Saturday, Starling, on your own time. Go feel the fruit, if there is any."

Crawford made a small, successful effort not to look after her as she left. From his wastebasket he lifted in the fork of his fingers a wad of heavy mauve notegaper. He spread it on his desk. It was about his wife and it said, in an engaging hand:

O wrangling schools, that search what fire

Shall burn this world, had none the wit

Unto this knowledge to aspire

That this her fever might be it?

I'm so sorry about Bella, Jack.

Hannibal Lecter

Everett Yow drove a black Buick with a De Paul University sticker on the back window. His weight gave the Buick a slight list to the left as Clarice Starling followed him out of Baltimore in the rain. It was almost dark; Starling's day as an investigator was nearly gone and she didn't have another day to replace it. She dealt with her impatience, tapping the wheel in time with the wipers as the traffic crawled down Route 301.

Yow was intelligent, fat, and had a breathing problem. Starling guessed his age at sixty. So far he was accommodating. The lost day was not his fault; returning in the late afternoon from a week-long business trip to Chicago, the Baltimore lawyer had come directly from the airport to his office to meet Starling.

Raspail's classic Packard had been stored since long before his death, Yow explained. It was unlicensed and never driven. Yow had seen it once, covered and in storage, to confirm its existence for the estate inventory he made shortly after his client's murder. If Investigator Starling would agree to "frankly disclose at once" anything she found that might be damaging to his late client's interests, he would show her the automobile, he said. A warrant and the attendant stir would not be necessary.

Starling was enjoying the use for one day of an FBI motor pool Plymouth with a cellular telephone, and she had a new ID card provided by Crawford. It simply said FEDERAL INVESTIGATOR -- and expired in a week, she noticed.

Their destination was Split City Mini-Storage, about four miles past the city limits. Creeping along with the traffic, Starling used her telephone to find out what she could about the storage facility. By the time she spotted the high orange sign, SLIT CITY MINI-STORAGE -- YOU KEEP THE KEY, she had learned a few facts.

Split City had an Interstate Commerce Commission freight-forwarder's license, in the name of Bernard Gary. A federal grand jury had barely missed Gary for interstate transportation of stolen goods three years ago, and his license was up for review.

Yow turned in beneath the sign and showed his keys to a spotty young man in uniform at the gate. The gatekeeper logged their license numbers, opened up and beckoned impatiently, as though he had more important things to do.

Split City is a bleak place the wind blows through. Like the Sunday divorce flight from La Guardia to Juárez, it is a service industry to the mindless Brownian movement in our population; most of its business is storing the sundered chattels of divorce. Its units are stacked with living room suites, breakfast ensembles, spotted mattresses, toys, and the photographs of things that didn't work out. It is widely believed among Baltimore County sheriff's officers that Split City also hides good and valuable consideration from the bankruptcy courts.

It resembles a military installation: thirty acres of long buildings divided by fire walls into units the size of a generous single garage, each with its roll-up overhead door. The rates are reasonable and some of the property has been there for years. Security is good. The place is surrounded by a double row of high hurricane fence, and dogs patrol between the fences twenty-four hours a day.