Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

He pulled into the apartment parking lot. "This setup ain't heaven, but it could be worse. You'll park here tomorrow night. We'll change the space you use every night after that, but it'll always be on this side. It's seventy-five yards to the apartment entrance. Let's walk it."

Spurgen, short and bandy-legged, went ahead of Graham and Crawford.

He's looking for places where he could get the bad hop , Graham thought.

"The walk is probably where it'll happen, if it happens," the SWAT leader said. "See, from here the direct line from your car to the entrance, the natural route, is across the center of the lot. It's as far as you can get from the line of cars that are here all day. He'll have to come across open asphalt to get close. How well do you hear?"

"Pretty well," Graham said. "Damn well on this parking lot."

Spurgen looked for something in Graham's face, found nothing he could recognize.

He stopped in the middle of the lot. "We're reducing the wattage on these streetlights a little to make it tougher on a rifleman."

"Tougher on your people too," Crawford said.

"Two of ours have Startron night scopes," Spurgen said. "I've got some clear spray I'll ask you to use on your suit jackets, Will. By the way, I don't care how hot it is, you will wear body armor each and every time. Correct?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"It's Kevlar – what, Jack? – Second Chance?"

"Second Chance," Crawford said.

"It's pretty likely he'll come up to you, probably from behind, or he may figure on meeting you and then turning around to shoot when he's passed you," Spurgen said. "Seven times he's gone for the head shot, right? He's seen that work. He'll do it with you too if you give him the time. Don't give him the time. After I show you a couple of things in the lobby and the flop, let's go to the range. Can you do that?"

"He can do that," Crawford said.

Spurgen was high priest on the range. He made Graham wear earplugs under the earmuffs and flashed targets at him from every angle. He was relieved to see that Graham did not carry the regulation.38, but he worried about the flash from the ported barrel. They worked for two hours. The man insisted on checking the cylinder crane and cylinder latch screws on Graham's.44 when he had finished firing.

Graham showered and changed clothes to get the smell of gun-smoke off him before he drove to the bay for his last free night with Molly and Willy.

He took his wife and stepson to the grocery store after dinner and made a considerable to-do over selecting melons. He made sure they bought plenty of groceries – the old Tattler was still on the racks beside the checkout stands and he hoped Molly would not see the new issue coming in the morning. He didn't want to tell her what was happening.

When she asked him what he wanted for dinner in the coming week, he had to say he'd be away, that he was going back to Birmingham. It was the first real lie he had ever told her and telling it made him feel as greasy as old currency.

He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical checkups for him and Willy, her controlled fear of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.

Pachelbel's Canon filled the sun-drowned room where thev learned each other and there was the exhilaration too big to hold and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey's shadow: this is too good to live for long.

Molly switched her bag often from shoulder to shoulder in the grocery aisles, as though the gun in it weighed much more than its nineteen ounces.

Graham would have been offended had he heard the ugly thing he mumbled to the melons: "I have to put that bastard in a rubber sack, that's all. I have to do that."

Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop.

Molly smelled a rat. She and Graham did not speak after the lights were out. Molly dreamed of heavy crazy footsteps coming in a house of changing rooms.

There is a newsstand in Lambert St. Louis International Airport which carries many of the major daily newspapers from all over the United States. The New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles papers come in by air freight and you can buy them on the same day they are published.

Like many newsstands, this one is owned by a chain and, along with the standard magazines and papers, the operator is required to take a certain amount of trash.

When the Chicago Tribune was delivered to the stand at ten o'clock on Monday night, a bundle of Tattlers thumped to the floor beside it. The bundle was still warm in the center.

The newsstand operator squatted in front of his shelves arranging the Tribunes . He had enough else to do. The day guys never did their share of straightening.

A pair of black zippered boots came into the corner of his vision. A browser. No, the boots were pointed at him. Somebody wanted some damn thing. The newsie wanted to finish arranging his Tribunes but the insistent attention made the back of his head prickle.

His trade was transient. He didn't have to be nice. "What is it?" he said to the knees.

" A Tattler ."

"You'll have to wait until I bust the bundle."

The boots did not go away. They were too close.

"I said you'll have to wait until I bust the bundle. Understand? See I'm working here?"

A hand and a flash of bright steel and the twine on the bundle beside him parted with a pop. A Susan B. Anthony dollar rang on the floor in front of him. A clean copy of the Tattler , jerked from the center of the bundle, spilled the top ones to the floor.

The newsstand operator got to his feet. His cheeks were flushed. The man was leaving with the paper under his arm.

"Hey. Hey, you."

The man turned to face him. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. I told you-"

"You told me what?" He was coming back. He stood too close. "You told me what?"

Usually a rude merchant can fluster his customers. There was something awful in this one's calm.

The newsie looked at the floor. "You got a quarter coming back." Dolarhyde turned his back and walked out. The newsstand operator's cheeks burned for half an hour. Yeah, that guy was in here last week too. He comes in here again, I'll tell him where to fuckin' get off. I got somethin' under the counter for wise-asses.

Dolarhyde did not look at the Tattler in the airport. Last Thursday's message from Lecter had left him with mixed feelings. Dr. Lecter had been right, of course, in saying that he was beautiful and it was thrilling to read. He was beautiful. He felt some contempt for the doctor's fear of the policeman. Lecter did not understand much better than the public.

Still, he was on fire to know if Lecter had sent him another message. He would wait until he got home to look. Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control.

He mused about the newsstand operator as he drove.

There was a time when he would have apologized for disturbing the man and never come back to the newsstand. For years he had taken shit unlimited from people. Not anymore. The man could have insulted Francis Dolarhyde: he could not face the Dragon. It was all part of Becoming.

At midnight, the light above his desk still burned. The message from the Tattler was decoded and wadded on the floor. Pieces of the Tattler were scattered where Dolarhyde had clipped it for his journal. The great journal stood open beneath the painting of the Dragon, glue still drying where the new clippings were fastened. Beneath them, freshly attached, was a small plastic bag, empty as yet.