Red Dragon - Страница 53

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."

Crawford's word must have been emphatic: in forty minutes flat a Birmingham FBI agent, with realtor Geehan in tow, was shouting to a carpenter working in the rafters of a new house. The carpenter's information was relayed in a radio patch to Chicago.

"Last week in April," Crawford said, putting down the telephone. "That's when they put in the new door. My God, that's two months before the Jacobis were hit. Why would he case it two months in advance?"

"I don't know, but I promise you he saw Mrs. Jacobi or saw the whole family before he checked out their house. Unless he followed them down there from Detroit, he spotted Mrs. Jacobi sometime between April 10, when they moved to Birmingham, and the end of April, when the door was changed. Sometime in that period he was in Birmingham. The bureau's going on with it down there?"

"Cops too," Crawford said. "Tell me this: how did he know there was an inside door from the basement into the house? You couldn't count on that – not in the South."

"He saw the inside of the house, no question."'

"Has your buddy Metcalf got the Jacobi bank statements?"

"I'm sure he does."

"Let's see what service calls they paid for between April 10 and the end of the month. I know the service calls have been checked for a couple of weeks back from the killings, but maybe we aren't looking back far enough. Same for the Leedses."

"We always figured he looked around inside the Leeds house," Graham said. "From the alley he couldn't have seen the glass in the kitchen door. There's a latticed porch back there. But he was ready with his glass cutter. And they didn't have any service calls for three months before they were killed."

"If he's casing this far ahead, maybe we didn't check back far enough. We will now. At the Leedses' though – when he was in the alley reading meters behind the Leeds house two days before he killed them – maybe he saw them going in the house. He could have looked in there while the porch door was open."

"No, the doors don't line up – remember? Look here."

Graham threaded the projector with the Leeds home movie.

The Leedses' gray Scotty perked up his ears and ran to the kitchen door. Valerie Leeds and the children came in carrying groceries. Through the kitchen door nothing but lattice was visible.

"All right, you want to get Byron Metcalf busy on the bank statement for April? Any kind of service call or purchase that a door-to-door salesman might handle. No – I'll do that while you wind up the profile. Have you got Metcalf's number?"

Seeing the Leedses preoccupied Graham. Absently he told Crawford three numbers for Byron Metcalf.

He ran the films again while Crawford used the phone in the jury room.

The Leeds film first.

There was the Leedses' dog. It wore no collar, and the neighborhood was full of dogs, but the Dragon knew which dog was theirs.

Here was Valerie Leeds. The sight of her tugged at Graham.

There was the door behind her, vulnerable with its big glass pane. Her children played on the courtroom screen.

Graham had never felt as close to the Jacobis as he did to the Leedses. Their movie disturbed him now. It bothered him that he had thought of the Jacobis as chalk marks on a bloody floor.

There were the Jacobi children, ranged around the corner of the table, the birthday candles flickering on their faces.

For a flash Graham saw the blob of candle wax on the Jacobis' bedside table, the bloodstains around the corner of the bedroom at the Leedses'. Something…

Crawford was coming back. "Metcalf said to ask you-"

"Don't talk to me!"

Crawford wasn't offended, He waited stock-still and his little eyes grew narrow and bright.

The film ran on, its light and shadows playing over Graham's face.

There was the Jacobis' cat. The Dragon knew it was the Jacobis' cat.

There was the inside basement door.

There was the outside basement door with its padlock. The Dragon had brought a bolt cutter.

The film ended. Finally it came off the reel and the end flapped around and around.

Everything the Dragon needed to know was on the two films. They hadn't been shown in public, there wasn't any film club, film festi…

Graham looked at the familiar green box the Leeds movie came in. Their name and address were on it. And Gateway Film Laboratory, St. Louis, Mo. 63102.

His mind retrieved "St. Louis" just as it would retrieve any telephone number he had ever seen. What about St. Louis? It was one of the places where the Tattler was available on Monday night, the same day it was printed – the day before Lounds was abducted.

"Oh me," Graham said. "Oh Jesus."

He clamped his hands on the sides of his head to keep the thought from getting away.

"Do you still have Metcalf on the phone?"

Crawford handed him the receiver.

"Byron, it's Graham. Listen, did those reels of Jacobi film you sent – were they in any containers?… Sure, sure I know you would have sent ' em along. I need help bad on something. Do you have the Jacobi bank statements there? Okay, I want to know where they got movie film developed. Probably a store sent it off for them. If there're any checks to pharmacies or camera stores, we can find out where they did business. It's urgent, Byron. I'll tell you about it first chance. Birmingham FBI will start now checking the stores. If you find something, shoot it straight to them, then to us. Will you do that? Great. What? No, I will not introduce you to Hotlips."

Birmingham FBI agents checked four camera stores before they found the one where the Jacobis traded. The manager said all customers' film was sent to one place for processing.

Crawford had watched the films twelve times before Birmingham called back. He took the message.

Curiously formal, he held out his hand to Graham. "It's Gateway," he said.

CHAPTER 43

Crawford was stirring an Alka-Seltzer in a plastic glass when the stewardess's voice came over the 727'S public-address system.