Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

Cutting across the gardens now toward Prospect Park, the towel around his neck, he came out onto Empire Boulevard. Joggers were ahead of him. As he followed the joggers into the park, the first police cruisers screamed past. None of the joggers paid any attention to them. Neither did Dolarhyde.

He alternated jogging and walking, carrying his grocery bag and racket and bouncing his tennis ball, a man cooing off from a hard workout who had stopped by the store on the way home.

He made himself slow down; he shouldn't run on a full stomach. He could choose his pace now.

He could choose anything.

Crawford sat in the back row of the jury box eating Redskin peanuts while Graham closed the courtroom blinds.

"You'll have the profile for me later this afternoon, I take it," Crawford said. "You told me Tuesday; this is Tuesday."

"I'll finish it. I want to watch this first."

Graham opened the express envelope from Byron Metcalf and dumped out the – two dusty rolls of home-movie film, each in plastic sandwich bag.

"Is Metcalf pressing charges against Niles Jacobi?"

"Not for theft – he'll probably inherit anyway – he and Jacobi's brother," Graham said. "On the hash, I don't know. Birmingham DA's inclined to break his chops."

"Good," Crawford said.

The movie screen swung down from the courtroom ceiling to face the jury box, an arrangement which made it easy to show jurors filmed evidence.

Graham threaded the projector.

"On checking the newsstands where the Tooth Fairy could have gotten a Tattler so fast – I've had reports back from Cincinnati, Detroit, and a bunch from Chicago," Crawford said. "Various weirdos to run down."

Graham started the film. It was a fishing movie.

The Jacobi children hunkered on the bank of a pond with cane poles and bobbers.

Graham tried not to think of them in their small boxes in the ground. He tried to think of them just fishing.

The girl's cork bobbed and disappeared. She had a bite.

Crawford crackled his peanut sack. "Indianapolis is dragging ass on questioning newsies and checking the Servco Supreme stations," he said.

"Do you want to watch this or what?" Graham said.

Crawford was silent until the end of the two-minute film. "Terrific, she caught a perch," he said. "Now the profile-"

"Jack, you were in Birmingham right after it happened. I didn't get there for a month. You saw the house while it was still their house – I didn't. It was stripped and remodeled when I got there. Now, for Christ's sake let me look at these people and then I'll finish the profile."

He started the second film.

A birthday party appeared on the screen in the courtroom. The Jacobis were seated around a dining table. They were singing.

Graham lip-read "Haaappy Birth-day to you."

Eleven-year-old Donald Jacobi faced the camera. He was seated at the end of the table with the cake in front of him. The candles reflected in his glasses.

Around the corner of the table, his brother and sister were side by side watching him as he blew out the candles.

Graham shifted in his seat.

Mrs. Jacobi leaned over, her dark hair swinging, to catch the cat and dump it off the table.

Now Mrs. Jacobi brought a large envelope to her son. A long ribbon trailed from it. Donald Jacobi opened the envelope and took out a big birthday card. He looked up at the camera and turned the card around. It said "Happy Birthday – follow the ribbon."

Bouncing progress as the camera followed the procession to the kitchen. A door there, fastened with a hook. Down the basement stairs, Donald first, then the others, following the ribbon down the steps. The end of the ribbon was tied around the handlebars of a ten-speed bicycle.

Graham wondered why they hadn't given him the bike outdoors.

A jumpy cut to the next scene, and his question was answered. Outdoors now, and clearly it had been raining hard. Water stood in the yard. The house looked different. Realtor Geehan had changed the color when he did it over after the murders. The outside basement door opened and Mr. Jacobi emerged carrying the bicycle. This was the first view of him in the movie. A breeze lifted the hair combed across his bald spot. He set the bicycle ceremoniously on the ground.

The film ended with Donald's cautious first ride.

"Sad damn thing," Crawford said, "but we already knew that." Graham started the birthday film over.

Crawford shook his head and began to read something from his briefcase with the aid of a penlight.

On the screen Mr. Jacobi brought the bicycle out of the basement. The basement door swung closed behind him. A padlock hung from it.

Graham froze the frame. "There. That's what he wanted the bolt cutter for, Jack – to cut that padlock and go in through the basement. Why didn't he go in that way?''

Crawford clicked off his penlight and looked over his glasses at the screen. "What's that?"

"I know he had a bolt cutter – he used it to trim that branch out of his way when he was watching from the woods. Why didn't he use it and go in through the basement door?"

"He couldn't." With a small crocodile smile, Crawford waited. He loved to catch people in assumptions.

"Did he try? Did he mark it up? I never even saw that door – Geehan had put in a steel one with deadbolts by the time I got there."

Crawford opened his jaws. "You assume Geehan put it in. Geehan didn't put it in. The steel door was there when they were killed. Jacobi must have put it in – he was a Detroit guy, he'd favor deadbolts."

"When did Jacobi put it in?"

"I don't know. Obviously it was after the kid's birthday – when was that? It'll be in the autopsy if you've got it here."

"His birthday was April 14, a Monday," Graham said, staring at the screen, his chin in his hand. "I want to know when Jacobi changed the door."

Crawford's scalp wrinkled. It smoothed out again as he saw the point. "You think the Tooth Fairy cased the Jacobi house while the old door with the padlock was still there," he said.

"He brought a bolt cutter, didn't he? How do you break in someplace with a bolt cutter?" Graham said. "You cut padlocks, bars, or chain. Jacobi didn't have any bars or chained gates, did he?"

"No."

"Then he went there expecting a padlock. A bolt cutter's fairly heavy and it's long. He was moving in daylight, and from where he parked he had to hike a long way to the Jacobi house. For all he knew, he might be coming back in one hell of a hurry if something went wrong. He wouldn't have carried a bolt cutter unless he knew he'd need it. He was expecting a padlock."

"You figure he cased the place before Jacobi changed the door. Then he shows up to kill them, waits in the woods-"

"You can't see this side of the house from the woods."

Crawford nodded. "He waits in the woods. They go to bed and he moves in with his bolt cutter and finds the new door with the deadbolts."

"Say he finds the new door. He had it all worked out, and now this," Graham said, throwing up his hands. "He's really pissed off, frustrated, he's hot to get in there. So he does a fast, loud pry job on the patio door. It was messy the way he went in – he woke Jacobi up and had to blow him away on the stairs. That's not like the Dragon. He's not messy that way. He's careful and he leaves nothing behind. He did a neat job at the Leedses' going in."

"Okay, all right," Crawford said. "If we find out when Jacobi changed his door, maybe we'll establish the interval between when he cased it and when he killed them. The minimum time that elapsed, anyway. That seems like a useful thing to know. Maybe it'll match some interval the Birmingham convention and visitors bureau could show us. We can check car rentals again. This time we'll do vans too. I'll have a word with the Birmingham field office."