Red Dragon - Страница 6

"Yeah, they were fine."

"We don't have shit and we know it," Springfield said. "Oh, we developed a walking picture from the footprints in the flowerbed. He was walking around bushes and stuff, so you can't tell much more than his shoe size, maybe his height. The left print's a little deeper, so he may have been carrying something. It's busywork. We did get a burglar, though, a couple of years ago, off a walking picture. Showed Parkinson's disease. Princi picked it up. No luck this time."

"You have a good crew," Graham said.

"They are. But this kind of thing is out of our usual line, thank God. Let me get it straight, do you fellows work together all the time – you and Jack and Dr. Bloom – or do you just get together for one of these?"

"Just for these," Graham said.

"Some reunion. The commissioner was saying you were the one who nailed Lecter three years ago."

"We were all there with the Maryland police," Graham said. "The Maryland state troopers arrested him."

Springfield was bluff, not stupid. He could see that Graham was uncomfortable. He swiveled in his chair and picked up some notes.

"You asked about the dog. Here's the sheet on it. Last night a vet here called Leeds 's brother. He had the dog. Leeds and his oldest boy brought it in to the vet the afternoon before they were killed. It had a puncture wound in the abdomen. The vet operated and it's all right. He thought it was shot at first, but he didn't find a bullet. He thinks it was stabbed with something like an ice pick or an awl. We're asking the neighbors if they saw anybody fooling with the dog, and we're working the phones today checking local vets for other animal mutilations."

"Was the dog wearing a collar with the Leeds name on it?"

"No."

"Did the Jacobis in Birmingham have a dog?" Graham asked.

"We're supposed to be finding that out," Springfield said. "Hold on, let me see." He dialed an inside number. "Lieutenant Flatt is our liaison with Birmingham… yeah, Flatt. What about the Jacobis' dog? Uh-huh… uh-huh. Just a minute." He put his hand over the phone. "No dog. They found a litter box in the downstairs bathroom with cat droppings in it. They didn't find any cat. The neighbors are watching for it."

"Could you ask Birmingham to check around in the yard and behind any outbuildings," Graham said. "If the cat was hurt, the children might not have found it in time and they might have buried it. You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home. And would you ask if it's wearing a collar?"

"Tell them if they need a methane probe, we'll send one," Crawford said. Save a lot of digging."

Springfield relayed the request. The telephone rang as soon as he hung it up. The call was for Jack Crawford. It was Jimmy Price at the Lombard Funeral Home. Crawford punched on from the other phone.

"Jack, I got a partial that's probably a thumb and a fragment of a palm."

"Jimmy, you're the light of my life."

"I know. The partial's a tented arch, but it's smudged. I'll have to see what I can do with it when I get back. Came off the oldest kid's left eye. I never did that before. Never would have seen it, but it stood out against an eight-ball hemorrhage from the gunshot wound."

"Can you make an identification off it?"

"It's a very long shot, Jack. If he's in the single-print index, maybe, but that's like the Irish Sweepstakes, you know that. The palm came off the nail of Mrs. Leeds's left big toe. It's only good for comparison. We'll be lucky to get six points off it. The assistant SAC witnessed, and so did Lombard. He's a notary. I've got pictures in situ. Will that do it?"

"What about elimination prints on the funeral-home employees?"

"I inked up Lombard and all his Merry Men, major case prints whether they said they had touched her or not. They're scrubbing their hands and bitching now. Let me go home, Jack. I want to work these up in my own darkroom. Who knows what's in the water here – turtles – who knows?

"I can catch a plane to Washington in an hour and fax the prints down to you by early afternoon."

Crawford thought a moment. "Okay, Jimmy, but step on it. Copies to Atlanta and Birmingham PD's and Bureau offices."

"You got it. Now, something else we've got to get straight on your end."

Crawford rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Gonna piss in my ear about the per diem, aren't you?"

"Right."

"Today, Jimmy my lad, nothing's too good for you."

Graham stared out the window while Crawford told them about the prints.

"That's by God remarkable," was all Springfield said.

Graham's face was blank; closed like a lifer's face, Springfield though.

He watched Graham all the way to the door.

# # #

The public-safety commissioner's news conference was breaking up in the foyer as Crawford and Graham left Springfield 's office. The print reporters headed for the phones. Television reporters were doing "cutaways," standing alone before their cameras asking the best questions they had heard at the news conference and extending their microphones to thin air for a reply that would be spliced in later from film of the commissioner.

Crawford and Graham had started down the front steps when a small man darted ahead of them, spun and took a picture. His face popped up behind his camera.

"Will Graham!" he said. "Remember me – Freddy Lounds? I covered the Lecter case for the Tattler. I did the paperback."

"I remember," Graham said. He and Crawford continued down the steps, Lounds walking sideways ahead of them.

"When did they call you in, Will? What have you got?"

"I won't talk to you, Lounds."

"How does this guy compare with Lecter? Does he do them-"

"Lounds." Graham's voice was loud and Crawford got in front of him fast. "Lounds, you write lying shit, and The National Tattler is an asswipe. Keep away from me."

Crawford gripped Graham's arm. "Get away, Lounds. Go on. Will, let's get some breakfast. Come on, Will." They rounded the corner, walking swiftly.

"I'm sorry,Jack. I can't stand that bastard. When I was in the hospital, he came in and-"

"I know it," Crawford said. "I reamed him out, much good it did." Crawford remembered the picture in The National Tattler at the end of the Lecter case. Lounds had come into the hospital room while Graham was asleep. He flipped back the sheet and shot a picture of Graham's temporary colostomy. The paper ran it retouched with a black square covering Graham's groin. The caption said "Crazy Guts Cop."

The diner was bright and clean. Graham's hands trembled and he slopped coffee in his saucer.

He saw Crawford's cigarette smoke bothering a couple in the next booth. The couple ate in a peptic silence, their resentment hanging in the smoke.

Two women, apparently mother and daughter, argued at a table near the door. They spoke in low voices, anger ugly in their faces. Graham could feel their anger on his face and neck.

Crawford was griping about having to testify at a trial in Washington in the morning. He was afraid the trial could tie him up for several days. As he lit another cigarette, he peered across the flame at Graham's hands and his color.

" Atlanta and Birmingham can run the thumbprint against their known sex offenders," Crawford said. "So can we. And Price has dug a single print out of the files before. He'll program the FINDER with it – we've come a long way with that just since you left."

FINDER, the FBI's automated fingerprint reader and processor, might recognize the thumbprint on an incoming fingerprint card from some unrelated case.

"When we get him, that print and his teeth will put him away,' Crawford said. "What we have to do, we have to figure on what he could be. We have to swing a wide loop. Indulge me, now. Say we've arrested a good suspect. You walk in and see him. What is there about him that doesn't surprise you?"

"I don't know, Jack. Goddammit, he's got no face for me. We could spend a lot of time looking for people we've invented. Have you talked to Bloom?"

"On the phone last night. Bloom doubts he's suicidal, and so does Heimlich. Bloom was only here a couple of hours the first day, but he and Heimlich have the whole file. Bloom's examining Ph.D. candidates this week. He said tell you hello. Do you have his number in Chicago?"

"I have it."

Graham liked Dr. Alan Bloom, a small round man with sad eyes, a good forensic psychiatrist – maybe the best. Graham appreciated the fact that Dr. Bloom had never displayed professional interest in him. That was not always the case with psychiatrists.

"Bloom says he wouldn't be surprised if we heard from the Tooth Fairy. He might write us a note," Crawford said.

"On a bedroom wall."

"Bloom thinks he might be disfigured or he may believe he's disfigured. He told me not to give that a lot of weight. 'I won't set up a straw man to chase, Jack,' is what he told me. 'That would be a distraction and would diffuse the effort.' Said they taught him to talk like that in graduate school."

"He's right" Graham said.

"You could tell something about him or you wouldn't have found that fingerprint," Crawford said.

"That was the evidence on the damn wall, Jack. Don't put this on me. Look, don't expect too much from me, all right?"

"Oh, we'll get him. You know we'll get him, don't you?"

"I know it. One way or the other."

"What's one way?"

"We'll find evidence we've overlooked."

"What's the other?"

"He'll do it and do it until one night he makes too much noise going in and the husband gets to a gun in time."