Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

"No."

"I wouldn't blame you for wondering. We both know people it happened to. I don't like walking around in a Kevlar vest with my butt puckered up. But hell, I'm in it now. We can't go home as long as he's loose."

"I never doubted you'd do it."

Graham saw that this was true. "It's something more then, isn't it?"

Crawford said nothing.

"No Molly. No way ."

"Jesus, Will, even I wouldn't ask you that."

Graham stared at him for a moment. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Jack. You've decided to play ball with Freddy Lounds, haven't you? You and little Freddy have cut a deal."

Crawford frowned at a spot on his tie. He looked up at Graham. "You know yourself it's the best way to bait him. The Tooth Fairy's gonna watch the Tattler . What else have we got?"

"It has to be Lounds doing it?"

"He's got the corner on the Tattler."

"So I really bad-mouth the Tooth Fairy in the Tattler and then we give him a shot. You think it's better than the mail drop? Don't answer that, I know it is. Have you talked to Bloom about it?"

"Just in passing. We'll both get together with him. And Lounds. We'll run the mail drop on him at the same time."

"What about the setup? I think we'll have to give him a pretty good shot at it. Something open. Someplace where he can get close. I don't think he'd snipe. He might fool me, but I can't see him with a rifle."

"We'll have stillwatches on the high places."

They were both thinking the same thing. Kevlar body armor would stop the Tooth Fairy's nine-millimeter and his knife unless Graham got hit in the face. There was no way to protect him against a head shot if a hidden rifleman got the chance to fire.

"You talk to Lounds. I don't have to do that."

"He needs to interview you, Will," Crawford said gently. "He has to take your picture."

Bloom had warned Crawford he'd have trouble on that point.

When the time came, Graham surprised both Crawford and Bloom. He seemed willing to meet Lounds halfway and his expression was affable beneath the cold blue eyes.

Being inside FBI headquarters had a salutary effect on Lounds's manners. He was polite when he remembered to be, and he was quick and quiet with his equipment.

Graham balked only once: he flatly refused to let Lounds see Mrs. Leeds's diary or any of the families' private correspondence.

When the interview began, he answered Lounds's questions in a civil tone. Both men consulted notes taken in conference with Dr. Bloom. The questions and answers were often rephrased.

Alan Bloom had found it difficult to scheme toward hurt. In the end, he simply laid out his theories about the Tooth Fairy. The others listened like karate students at an anatomy lecture.

Dr. Bloom said the Tooth Fairy's acts and his letter indicated a projective delusional scheme which compensated for intolerable feelings of inadequacy. Smashing the mirrors tied these feelings to his appearance.

The killer's objection to the name "Tooth Fairy" was grounded in the homosexual implications of the word "fairy." Bloom believed he had an unconscious homosexual conflict, a terrible fear of being gay. Dr. Bloom's opinion was reinforced by one curious observation at the Leeds house: fold marks and covered bloodstains indicated the Tooth Fairy put a pair of shorts on Charles Leeds after he was dead.

Dr. Bloom believed he did this to emphasize his lack of interest in Leeds.

The psychiatrist talked about the strong bonding of aggressive and sexual drives that occurs in sadists at a very early age.

The savage attacks aimed primarily at the women and performed in the presence of their families were clearly strikes at a maternal figure. Bloom, pacing, talking half to himself, called his subject "the child of a nightmare." Crawford's eyelids drooped at the compassion in his voice.

In the interview with Lounds, Graham made statements no investigator would make and no straight newspaper would credit.

He speculated that the Tooth Fairy was ugly, impotent with persons of the opposite sex, and he claimed falsely that the killer had sexually molested his male victims. Graham said that the Tooth Fairy doubtless was the laughingstock of his acquaintances and the product of an incestuous home.

He emphasized that the Tooth Fairy obviously was not as intelligent as Hannibal Lecter. He promised to provide the Tattler with more observations and insights about the killer as they occurred to him. Many law-inforcement people disagreed with him, he said, but as long as he was heading the investigation, the Tattler could count on getting the straight stuff from him.

Lounds took a lot of pictures.

The key shot was taken in Graham's " Washington hideaway," an apartment he had "borrowed to use until he squashed the Fairy." It was the only place where he could "find solitude" in the "carnival atmosphere" of the investigation.

The photograph showed Graham in a bathrobe at a desk, studying late into the night. He was poring over a grotesque "artist's conception" of "the Fairy."

Behind him a slice of the floodlit Capitol dome could be seen through the window. Most importantly, in the lower-left corner of the window, blurred but readable, was the sign of a popular motel across the street.

The Tooth Fairy could find the apartment if he wanted to.

At FBI headquarters, Graham was photographed in front of a mass spectrometer. It had nothing to do with the case, but Lounds thought it looked impressive.

Graham even consented to have his picture taken with Lounds interviewing him. They did it in front of the vast gun racks in Firearms and Toolmarks. Lounds held a nine-millimeter automatic of the same type as the Tooth Fairy's weapon. Graham pointed to the homemade silencer, fashioned from a length of television-antenna mast.

Dr. Bloom was surprised to see Graham put a comradely hand on Lounds's shoulder just before Crawford clicked the shutter.

The interview and pictures were set to appear in the Tattler published the next day, Monday, August 11. As soon as he had the material, Lounds left for Chicago. He said he wanted to supervise the layout himself. He made arrangements to meet Crawford on Tuesday afternoon five blocks from the trap.

Starting Tuesday, when the Tattler became generally available, two traps would be baited for the monster.

Graham would go each evening to his "temporary residence" shown in the Tattler picture.

A coded personal notice in the same issue invited the Tooth Fairy to a mail drop in Annapolis watched around the clock. If he were suspicious of the mail drop, he might think the effort to catch him was concentrated there. Then Graham would be a more appealling target, the FBI reasoned.

Florida authorities provided a stillwatch at Sugarloaf Key.

There was an air of dissatisfaction among the hunters – two major stakeouts took manpower that could be used elsewhere, and Graham's presence at the trap each night would limit his movement to the Washington area.

Though Crawford's judgment told him this was the best move, the whole procedure was too passive for his taste. He felt they were playing games with themselves in the dark of the moon with less than two weeks to go before it rose full again.

Sunday and Monday passed in curiously jerky time. The minutes dragged and the hours flew.

Spurgen, chief SWAT instructor at Quantico, circled the apartment block on Monday afternoon. Graham rode beside him. Crawford was in the back seat.

"The pedestrian traffic falls off around seven-fifteen. Everybody's settled in for dinner," Spurgen said. With his wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on his head, he looked like an infielder. "Give us a toot on the clear band tomorrow night when you cross the B amp;O railroad tracks. You ought to try to make it about eight-thirty, eight-forty or so."