Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

Crawford nodded. "Bowman?"

" Sharon from my office went after the paper and got samples to match. It's toilet tissue for marine heads and motor homes. The texture matches brand name Wedeker manufactured in Minneapolis. It has nationwide distribution."

Bowman set up his photographs on an easel near the windows. His voice was surprisingly deep for his slight stature, and his bow tie moved slightly when he talked. "On the handwriting itself, this is a right-handed person using his left hand and printing in a deliberate block pattern. You can see the unsteadiness in the strokes and varying letter sizes.

"The proportions make me think our man has a touch of uncorrected astigmatism.

"The inks on both pieces of the note look like the same standard ball-point royal blue in natural light, but a slight difference appears under colored filters. He used two pens, changing somewhere in the missing section of the note. You can see where the first one began to skip. The first pen is not used frequently – see the blob it starts with? It might have been stored point-down and uncapped in a pencil jar or canister, which suggests a desk situation. Also the surface the paper lay on was soft enough to be a blotter. A blotter might retain impressions if you find it. I want to add the blotter to Beverly 's advisory."

Bowman flipped to a photograph of the back of the note. The extreme enlargement made the paper look fuzzy. It was grooved with shadowed impressions. "He folded the note to write the bottom part, including what was later torn out. In this enlargement of the back side, oblique light reveals a few impressions. We can make out '666 an.' Maybe that's where he had pen trouble and had to bear down and overwrite. I didn't spot it until I had this high-contrast print. There's no 666 in any ad so far.

"The sentence structure is orderly, and there's no rambling. The folds suggest it was delivered in a standard letter-size envelope. These two dark places are printing-ink smudges. The note was probably folded inside some innocuous printed matter in the envelope.

"That's about it," Bowman said. "Unless you have questions, Jack, I'd better go to the courthouse. I'll check in after I testify."

"Sink 'em deep," Crawford said.

Graham studied the Tattler personals column. ("Attractive queen-size lady, young 52, seeks Christian Leo nonsmoker 40 – 70. No children please. Artificial limb welcomed. No phonies. Send photo first letter.")

Lost in the pain and desperation of the ads, he didn't notice that the others were leaving until Beverly Katz spoke to him.

"I'm sorry, Beverly. What did you say?" He looked at her bright eyes and kindly, well-worn face.

"I just said I'm glad to see you back, Champ. You're looking good."

"Thanks, Beverly."

"Saul's going to cooking school. He's still hit-or-miss, but when the dust settles come over and let him practice on you."

"I'll do it."

Zeller went away to prowl his laboratory. Only Crawford and Graham were left, looking at the clock.

"Forty minutes to Tattler press time," Crawford said. "I'm going after their mail. What do you say?"

"I think you have to."

Crawford passed the word to Chicago on Zeller's telephone. "Will, we need to be ready with a substitute ad if Chicago bingoes."

"I'll work on it."

"I'll set up the drop." Crawford called the Secret Service and talked at some length. Graham was still scribbling when he finished.

"Okay, the mail drop's a beauty," Crawford said at last. "It's an outside message box on a fire-extinguisher-service outfit in Annapolis. That's Lecter territory. The Tooth Fairy will see that it's something Lecter could know about Alphabetical pigeonholes. The service peopIe drive up to it and get assignments and mail. Our boy can check it out from a park across the street. Secret Service swears it looks good. They set it up to catch a counterfeiter, but it turned out they didn't need it. Here's the address. What about the message?"

"We have to use two messages in the same edition. The first one warns the Tooth Fairy that his enemies are closer than he thinks. It tells him he made a bad mistake in Atlanta and if he repeats the mistake he's doomed. It tells him Lecter has mailed 'secret information' I showed Lecter about what we're doing, how close we are, the leads we have. It directs the Tooth Fairy to a second message that begins with 'your signature.'

"The second message begins 'Avid Fan…' and contains the address of the mail drop. We have to do it that way. Even in roundabout language, the warning in the first message is going to excite some casual nuts. If they can't find out the address, they can't come to the drop and screw things up."

"Good. Damn good. Want to wait it out in my office?"

"I'd rather be doing something. I need to see Brian Zeller."

"Go ahead, I can get you in a hurry if I have to." Graham found the section chief in Serology.

"Brian, could you show me a couple of things?"

"Sure, what?"

"The samples you used to type the Tooth Fairy."

Zeller looked at Graham through the close-range section of his bifocals. "Was there something in the report you didn't understand?"

"No."

"Was something unclear?"

"No."

"Something incomplete?" Zeller mouthed the word as if it had an unpleasant taste.

"Your report was fine, couldn't ask for better. I just want to hold the evidence in my hand."

"Ah, certainly. We can do that." Zeller believed that all field men retain the superstitions of the hunt. He was glad to humor Graham. "It's all together down at that end."

Graham followed him between the long counters of apparatus. "You're reading Tedeschi."

"Yes," Zeller said over his shoulder. "We don't do any forensic medicine here, as you know, but Tedeschi has a lot of useful things in there. Graham. Will Graham. You wrote the standard monograph on determining time of death by insect activity, didn't you. Or do I have the right Graham?"

"I did it." A pause. "You're right, Mant and Nuorteva in the Tedeschi are better on insects."

Zeller was surprised to hear his thought spoken. "Well, it does have more pictures and a table of invasion waves. No offense."

"Of course not. They're better. I told them so."

Zeller gathered vials and slides from a cabinet and a refrigerator and set them on the laboratory counter. "If you want to ask me anything, I'll be where you found me. The stage light on this microscope is on the side here."

Graham did not want the microscope. He doubted none of Zeller's findings. He didn't know what he wanted. He raised the vials and slides to the light, and a glassine envelope with two blond hairs found in Birmingham. A second envelope held three hairs found on Mrs. Leeds.

There were spit and hair and semen on the table in front of Graham and empty air where he tried to see an image, a face, something to replace the shapeless dread he carried.

A woman's voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. "Graham, Will Graham, to Special Agent Crawford's office. On Red."

He found Sarah in her headset typing, with Crawford looking over her shoulder.

" Chicago 's got an ad order with 666 in it," Crawford said out of the side of his mouth. "They're dictating it to Sarah now. They said part of it looks like code."

The lines were climbing out of Sarah's typewriter.

Deer Pilgrim,

You honor me…

"That's it. That's it," Graham said. "Lecter called him a pilgrim when he was talking to me."

You’re very beautiful…

“Christ,” Crawford said.

I offer 100 prayers for your safety.

Find help in John 6:22, 8:16, 9:1; Luke 1:7, 3:1; Galatians 6:11, 15:2; Acis 3:3; Revelation 18:7; Jonah 6:8…

The typing slowed as Sarah read back each pair of numbers to the agent in Chicago. When she had finished, the list of scriptural references covered a quarter of a page. It was signed “Bless you, 666.”