Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

"Hey, Hoyt. I'll match you for a bottle of beer." It was his supervisor, Billy Meeks.

"Say, Billy, I need to talk to you."

"What's up?"

"You know that old son of a bitch Parsons that's all the time calling up?"

"Called me last week, as a matter of fact," Meeks said. "What about him?"

"He said somebody was reading my route ahead of me, like maybe somebody thought I wasn't making the rounds. You don't think I'm reading meters at home, do you?"

"Nope."

"You don't think that, do you? I mean, if I'm on a man's shit list I want him to come right out and say it."

"If you was on my shit list, you think I'd be scared to say so to your face?"

"No."

"All right, then. If anybody was checking your route, I'd know it. Your executives is always aware of a situation like that. Nobody's checking up on you, Hoyt. You can't pay any attention to Parsons, he's just old and contrary. He called me up last week and said, 'Congratulations on getting wise to that Hoyt Lewis.' I didn't pay him any mind."

"I wish we'd put the law on him about that meter," Lewis said. "I was just setting back there in the alley under a tree trying to eat my lunch today and he jumped me. What he needs is a good ass-kicking."

"I used to set back there myself when I had the route," Meeks said. "Boy, I tell you one time I seen Mrs. Leeds – well, it don't seem right to talk about it now she's dead – but one or two times she was out there sunning herself in the backyard in her swimming suit. Whooee. Had a cute little peter belly. That was a damn shame about them. She was a nice lady."

"Did they catch anybody yet?"

"Naw."

"Too bad he got the Leedses when old Parsons was right down the street convenient," Lewis observed.

"I'll tell you what, I don't let my old lady lay around out in the yard in no swimming suit. She goes 'Silly Billy, who's gonna see me?' I told her, I said you can't tell what kind of a insane bastard might jump over that hedge with his private out. Did the cops talk to you? Ask you had you seen anybody?"

"Yeah, I think they got everybody that has a route out there. Mailmen, everybody. I was working Laurelwood on the other side of Betty Jane Drive the whole week until today, though." Lewis picked at the label on his beer. "You say Parsons called you up last week?"

"Yep."

"Then he must have saw somebody reading his meter. He wouldn't have called in if he'd just made it up today to bother me. You say you didn't send nobody, and it sure wasn't me he saw."

"Might have been Southeastern Bell checking something."

"Might have been."

"We don't share poles out there, though."

"Reckon I ought to call the cops?"

"Wouldn't hurt nothing," Meeks said.

"Naw, it might do Parsons some good, talk with the law. Scare the shit out of him when they drive up, anyhow."

Graham went back to the Leeds house in the late afternoon. He entered through the front door and tried not to look at the ruin the killer had left. So far he had seen files, a killing floor and meat – all aftermath. He knew a fair amount about how they died. How they lived was on his mind today.

A survey, then. The garage contained a good ski boat, well used and well maintained, and a station wagon. Golf clubs were there, and a trail bike. The power tools were almost unused. Adult toys.

Graham took a wedge from the golf bag and had to choke up on the long shaft as he made a jerky swing. The bag puffed a smell of leather at him as he leaned it back against the wall. Charles Leeds's things.

Graham pursued Charles Leeds through the house. His hunting prints hung in the den. His set of the Great Books were all in a row. Sewanee annuals. H. Allen Smith and Perelman and Max Shulman on the bookshelves. Vonnegut and Evelyn Waugh. C. S. Forrester's Beat to Quarters was open on a table.

In the den closet a good skeet gun, a Nikon camera, a Bolex Super Eight movie camera and projector.

Graham, who owned almost nothing except basic fishing equipment, a third-hand Volkswagen, and two cases of Montrachet, felt a mild animosity toward the adult toys and wondered why.

Who was Leeds? A successful tax attorney, a Sewanee footballer, a rangy man who liked to laugh, a man who got up and fought with his throat cut.

Graham followed him through the house out of an odd sense of obligation. Learning about him first was a way of asking permission to look at his wife.

Graham felt that it was she who drew the monster, as surely as a singing cricket attracts death from the red-eyed fly.

Mrs. Leeds, then.

She had a small dressing room upstairs. Graham managed to reach it without looking around the bedroom. The room was yellow and appeared undisturbed except for the smashed mirror above the dressing table. A pair of L. L. Bean moccasins was on the floor in front of the closet, as though she had just stepped out of them. Her dressing gown appeared to have been flung on its peg, and the closet revealed the mild disorder of a woman who has many other closets to organize.

Mrs. Leeds's diary was in a plum velvet box on the dressing table. The key was taped to the lid along with a check tag from the police property room.

Graham sat on a spindly white chair and opened the diary at random:

December 23 rd, Tuesday, Mama's house. The children are still asleep. When Mama glassed in the sun porch, I hated the way it changed the looks of the house, but it's very pleasant and I can sit here warm looking out at the snow. How many more Christmases can she manage a houseful of grandchildren? A lot, I hope.

A hard drive yesterday up from Atlanta, snowing after Raleigh. We had to creep. I was tired anyway from getting everyone ready. Outside Chapel Hill, Charlie stopped the car and got out. He snapped some icicles off a branch to make me a martini. He came back to the car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking with a little pain and spilling warm.

I hope the parka fits him. If he got me that tacky dinner ring, I'll die. I could kick Madelyn's big cellulite behind for showing hers and carrying on. Four ridiculously big diamonds the color of dirty ice. Icicle ice is so clear. The sun came through the car window and where the icicle was broken off it stuck up out of the glass and made a little prism. It made a spot of red and green on my hand holding the glass. I could feel the colors on my hand.

He asked me what I want for Christmas and I cupped my hands around his ear and whispered: Your big prick, silly, in as far as it will go.

The bald spot on the back of his head turned red. He's ahvays afraid the children will hear. Men have no confidence in whispers.

The page was flecked with detective's cigar ash.

Graham read on as the light faded, through the daughter's tonsillectomy, and a scare in June when Mrs. Leeds found a small lump in her breast. (Dear God, the children are so small.)

Three pages later the lump was a small benign cyst, easily removed.

Dr. Janovich turned me loose this afternoon. We left the hospital and drove to the pond. We hadn't been there in a long while. There never seems to be enough time. Charlie had two bottles of champagre on ice and we drank them and fed the ducks while the sun went down. He stood at edge of the water with his back to me for a while and I think he cried a little.

Susan said she was afraid we were coming home from the hospital with another brother for her. Home!

Graham heard the telephone ring in the bedroom. A click and the hum of an answering machine. "Hello, this is Valerie Leeds. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number after the tone, we'll get back to you. Thank you."