Red Dragon - Страница 44

“Want some dinner?”

“I’ll wait till later. I get dumb after I eat.”

Leaving, Crawford looked back at Graham from the gloom of the doorway. He didn’t care for what he saw. The hanging lights deepened the hollows in Graham’s face as he studied with the victims staring at him from the photographs. The room smelled of desperation.

Would it be better for the case to put Graham back on the street? Crawford couldn’t afford to let him burn himself out in here for nothing. But for something?

Crawford’s excellent administrative instincts were not tempered by mercy. They told him to leave Graham alone.

CHAPTER 33

By ten P.M. Dolarhyde had worked out to near-exhaustion with the weights, had watched his films and tried to satisfy himself. Still he was restless.

Excitement bumped his chest like a cold medallion when he thought of Reba McClane. He should not think of Reba McClane.

Stretched out in his recliner, his torso pumped up and reddened by the workout, he watched the television news to see how the police were coming along with Freddy Lounds.

There was Will Graham standing near the casket with the choir howling away. Graham was slender. It would be easy to break his back. Better than killing him. Break his back and twist it just to be sure. They could roll him to the next investigation.

There was no hurry. Let Graham dread it.

Dolarhyde felt a quiet sense of power all the time now.

The Chicago police department made some noise at a news conference. Behind the racket about how hard they were working, the essence was: no progress on Freddy. Jack Crawford was in the group behind the microphones. Dolarhyde recognized him from a Tattler picture.

A spokesman from the Tattler, flanked by two bodyguards, said, “This savage and senseless act will only make the Tattler’s voice ring louder.”

Dolarhyde snorted. Maybe so. It had certainly shut Freddy up.

The news readers were calling him “The Dragon” now. His acts were “what the police had termed the ‘Tooth Fairy murders.’”

Definite progress.

Nothing but local news left. Some prognathous lout was reporting from the zoo. Clearly they’d send him anywhere to keep him out of the office.

Dolarhyde had reached for his remote control when he saw on the screen someone he had talked with only hours ago on the telephone: Zoo Director Dr. Frank Warfield, who had been so pleased to have the film Dolarhyde offered.

Dr. Warfield and a dentist were working on a tiger with a broken tooth. Dolarhyde wanted to see the tiger, but the reporter was in the way. Finally the newsman moved.

Rocked back in his recliner, looking along his own powerful torso at the screen, Dolarhyde saw the great tiger stretched unconscious on a heavy work table.

Today they were preparing the tooth. In a few days they would cap it, the oaf reported.

Dolarhyde watched them calmly working between the jaws of the tiger’s terrible striped face.

“May I touch your face?” said Miss Reba McClane.

He wanted to tell Reba McClane something. He wished she had one inkling of what she had almost done. He wished she had one flash of his Glory. But she could not have that and live. She must live: he had been seen with her and she was too close to home.

He had tried to share with Lecter, and Lecter had betrayed him. Still, he would like to share. He would like to share with her a little, in a way she could survive.

CHAPTER 34

“I know it’s political, you know it’s political, but it’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway,” Crawford told Graham. They were walking down the State Street Mall toward the federal office building in the late afternoon. “Do what you’re doing, just write out the parallels and I’ll do the rest.”

The Chicago police department had asked the FBI’s Behavioral Science section for a detailed victim profile. Police officials said they would use it in planning disposition of extra patrols during the period of the full moon.

“Covering their ass is what they’re doing,” Crawford said, waving his bag of Tater Tots. “The victims have been affluent people, they need to stack the patrols in affluent neighborhoods. They know there’ll be a squawk about that – the ward bosses have been fighting over the extra manpower ever since Freddy lit off. If they patrol the upper-middle-class neighborhoods and he hits the South Side, God help the city fathers. But if it happens, they can point at the damned feds. I can hear it now – ‘They told us to do it that way. That’s what they said do.”’

“I don’t think he’s any more likely to hit Chicago than anywhere else,” Graham said. “There’s no reason to think so. It’s a jerkoff. Why can’t Bloom do the profile? He’s a consultant to Behavioral Science.”

“They don’t want it from Bloom, they want it from us. It wouldn’t do them any good to blame Bloom. Besides, he’s still in the hospital. I’m instructed to do this. Somebody on the Hill has been on the phone with Justice. Above says do it. Will you just do it?”

“I’ll do it. It’s what I’m doing anyway.”

“That’s what I know,” Crawford said. “Just keep doing it.”

“I’d rather go back to Birmingham.”

“No,” Crawford said. “Stay with me on this.”

The last of Friday burned down the west.

Ten days to go.

CHAPTER 35

“Ready to tell me what kind of an ‘outing’ this is?” Reba McClane asked Dolarhyde on Saturday morning when they had ridden in silence for ten minutes. She hoped it was a picnic.

The van stopped. She heard Dolarhyde roll down his window.

“Dolarhyde,” he said. “Dr Warfield left my name.”

“Yes, sir. Would you put this under your wiper when you leave the vehicle?”

They moved forward slowly. Reba felt a gentle curve in the road. Strange and heavy odors on the wind. An elephant trumpeted.

“The zoo,” she said. “Terrific.” She would have preferred a picnic. What the hell, this was okay. “Who’s Dr. Warfield?”

“The zoo director.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“No. We did the zoo a favor with the film. They’re paying back.”

“How?”

“You get to touch the tiger.”

“Don’t surprise me too much!”

“Did you ever look at a tiger?”

She was glad he could ask the question. “No. I remember a puma when I was little. That’s all they had at the zoo in Red Deer. I think we better talk about this.”

“They’re working on the tiger’s tooth. They have to put him to sleep. If you want to, you can touch him.”

“Will there be a crowd, people waiting?”

“No. No audience. Warfield, me, a couple of people. TV’s coming in after we leave. Want to do it?” An odd urgency in the question.

“Hell fuzzy yes, I do! Thank you… that’s a fine surprise.”

The van stopped.

“Uh, how do I know he’s sound asleep?”

“Tickle him. If he laughs, run for it.”

The floor of the treatment room felt like linoleum under Reba’s shoes. The room was cool with large echoes. Radiant heat was coming from the far side.

A rhythmic shuffling of burdened feet and Dolarhyde guided her to one side until she felt the forked pressure of a corner.

It was in here now, she could smell it.

A voice. “Up, now. Easy. Down. Can we leave the sling under him, Dr. Warfield?”

“Yeah, wrap that cushion in one of the green towels and put it under his head. I’ll send John for you when we’ve finished.”

Footsteps leaving.

She waited for Dolarhyde to tell her something. He didn’t.

“It’s in here,” she said.

“Ten men carried it in on a sling. It’s big. Ten feet. Dr. Warfield’s listening to its heart. Now he’s looking under one eyelid. Here he comes.”

A body damped the noise in front of her.

“Dr. Warfield, Reba MeClane,” Dolarhyde said.

She held out her hand. A large, soft hand took it.

“Thanks for letting me come,” she said. “It’s a treat.”

“Glad you could come. Enlivens my day. We appreciate the film, by the way.”

Dr. Warfield’s voice was middle-aged, deep, cultured, black. Virginia, she guessed.

“We’re waiting to be sure his respiration and heartbeat are strong and steady before Dr. Hassler starts. Hassler’s over there adjusting his head mirror. Just between us, he only wears it to hold down his toupee. Come meet him. Mr. Dolarhyde?”

“You go ahead.”

She put out her hand to Dolarhyde. The pat was slow in coming, light when it came. His palm left sweat on her knuckles.

Dr. Warfield placed her hand on his arm and they walked forward slowly.

“He’s sound asleep. Do you have a general impression…? I’ll describe as much as you like.” He stopped, uncertain how to put it.

“I remember pictures in books when I was a child, and I saw a puma once in the zoo near home.”

“This tiger is like a super puma,” he said. “Deeper chest, more massive head, and a heavier frame and musculature. He’s a four-year-old male Bengal. He’s about ten feet long, from his nose to the tip of his tail, and he weighs eight hundred and fifteen pounds. He’s lying on his right side under bright lights.”

“I can feel the lights.”

“He’s striking, orange and black stripes, the orange is so bright it seems almost to bleed into the air around him.” Suddenly Dr. Warfield feared that it was cruel to talk of colors. A glance at her face reassured him.

“He’s six feet away, can you smell him?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Dolarhyde may have told you, some dimwit poked at him through the barrier with one of our gardener’s spades. He snapped off the long fang on the upper left side on the blade. Okay, Dr. Hassler?”