The Silence of the Lambs - Страница 3

"Yes, he told me."

"Okay. It's past the others, the last cell on the right. Stay toward the middle of the corridor as you go down, and don't mind anything. You can take him his mail, get off on the right foot." The orderly seemed privately amused. "You just put it in the tray and let it roll through. If the tray's inside, you can pull it back with the cord, or he can send it back. He can't reach you where the tray stops outside." The orderly gave her two magazines, their loose pages spilling out, three newspapers and several opened letters.

The corridor was about thirty yards long, with cells on both sides. Some were padded cells with an observation window, long and narrow like an archery slit; in the center of the door. Others were standard prison cells, with a wall of bars opening on the corridor. Clarice Starling was aware of figures in the cells, but she tried not to look at them. She was more than halfway down when a voice hissed, "I can smell your cunt." She gave no sign that she had heard it, and went on.

The lights were on in the last cell. She moved toward the left side of the corridor to see into it as she approached, knowing her heels announced her.

CHAPTER 3

Dr. Lecter's cell is well beyond the others, facing only a closet across the corridor, and it is unique in ether ways. The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance greater than the human reach, is a second barrier, a stout nylon net stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Behind the net, Starling could see a table bolted to the floor and piled high with softcover books and papers, and a straight chair, also fastened down.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of Vogue. He held the loose pages in his right hand and put them beside him one by one with his left. Dr. Lecter has six fingers on his left hand.

Clarice Starling stopped a little distance from the bars, about the length of a small foyer.

"Dr. Lecter." Her voice sounded all right to her.

He looked up from his reading.

For a steep second she thought his gaze hummed, but it was only her blood she heard.

"My name is Clarice Starling. May I talk with you?" Courtesy was implicit in her distance and her tone.

Dr. Lecter considered, his finger pressed against his pursed lips. Then he rose in his own time and came forward smoothly in his cage, stopping short of the nylon web without looking at it, as though he chose the distance.

She could see that he was small, sleek; in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own.

"Good morning," he said, as though he had answered the door. His cultured voice has a slight metallic rasp beneath it, possibly from disuse.

Dr. Lecter's eyes are maroon and they reflect the light in pinpoints of red. Sometimes the points of light seem to fly like sparks to his center. His eyes held Starling whole.

She came a measured distance closer to the bars. The hair on her forearms rose and pressed against her sleeves.

"Doctor, we have a hard problem in psychological profiling. I want to ask you for your help."

" 'We' being Behavioral Science at Quantico. You're one of Jack Crawford's, I expect."

"I am, yes."

"May I see your credentials?"

She hadn't expected this. "I showed them at the… office."

"You mean you showed them to Frederick Chilton, Ph.D.?"

"Yes."

"Did you see his credentials?"

"No."

"The academic ones don't make extensive reading, I can tell you. Did you meet Alan? Isn't he charming? Which of them had you rather talk with?"

"On the whole, I'd say Alan."

"You could be a reporter Chilton let in for money. I think I'm entitled to see your credentials."

"All right." She held up her laminated ID card.

"I can't read it at this distance, send it through, please."

"I can't."

"Because it's hard."

"Yes."

"Ask Barney."

The orderly came and considered. "Dr. Lecter, I'll let this come through. But if you don't return it when I ask you to-- if we have to bother everybody and secure you to get it-- then I'll be upset. If you upset me, you'll have to stay bundled up until I feel better toward you. Meals through the tube, dignity pants changed twice a day-- the works. And I'll hold your mail for a week. Got it?"

"Certainly, Barney."

The card rolled through on the tray and Dr. Lecter held it to the light.

"A trainee? It says 'trainee.' Jack Crawford sent a trainee to interview me?" He tapped the card against his small white teeth and breathed in its smell.

"Dr. Lecter," Barney said.

"Of course." He put the card back in the tray carrier and Barney pulled it to the outside.

"I'm still in training at the Academy, yes," Starling said, "but we're not discussing the FBI-- we're talking psychology. Can you decide for yourself if I'm qualified in what we talk about?"

"Ummmm," Dr. Lecter said. "Actually… that's rather slippery of you. Barney, do you think Officer Starling might have a chair?"

"Dr. Chilton didn't tell me anything about a chair."

"What do your manners tell you, Barney?"

"Would you like a chair?" Barney asked her. "We could have had one, but he never-- well, usually nobody needs to stay that long."

"Yes, thank you," Starling said.

Barney brought a folding chair from the locked closet across the hall, set it up, and left them.

"Now," Lecter said, sitting sideways at his table to face her, "what did Miggs say to you?"

"Who?"

"Multiple Miggs, in the cell down there. He hissed at you. What did he say?"

"He said, 'I can smell your cunt."'

"I see. I myself cannot. You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air du Temps, but not today. Today you are determinedly unperfumed. How do you feel about what Miggs said?"

"He's hostile for reasons I couldn't know. It's too bad. He's hostile to people, people are hostile to him. It's a loop."

"Are you hostile to him?"

"I'm sorry he's disturbed. Beyond that, he's noise. How did you know about the perfume?"

"A puff from your bag when you got out your card. Your bag is lovely."

"Thank you."

"You brought your best bag, didn't you?"

"Yes." It was true. She had saved for the classic casual handbag, and it was the best item she owned.

"It's much better than your shoes."

"Maybe they'll catch up."

"I have no doubt of it."

"Did you do the drawings on your walls, Doctor?"

"Do you think I called in a decorator?"

"The one over the sink is a European city?"

"It's Florence. That's the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere."

"Did you do it from memory, all the detail?"

"Memory, Officer Starling, is what I have instead of a view."

"The other one is a crucifixion? The middle cross is empty.'

"It's Golgotha after the Deposition. Crayon and Magic Marker on butcher paper. It's what the thief who had been promised Paradise really got, when they took the paschal lamb away."

"And what was that?"

"His legs broken of course, just like his companion who mocked Christ. Are you entirely innocent of the Gospel of St. John? Look at Duccio, then-- he paints accurate crucifixions. How is Will Graham? How does he look?"

"I don't know Will Graham."

"You know who he is. Jack Crawford's protégé. The one before you. How does his face look?"

"I've never seen him."

"This is called 'cutting up a few old touches,' Officer Starling, you don't mind do you?"

Beats of silence and she plunged.

"Better than that, we could touch up a few old cuts here. I brought--"

"No. No, that's stupid and wrong. Never use wit in a segue. Listen, understanding a witticism and replying to it makes your subject perform a fast, detached scan that is inimical to mood. It is on the plank of mood that we proceed. You were doing fine, you'd been courteous and receptive to courtesy, you'd established trust by telling the embarrassing truth about Miggs, and then you come in with a ham-handed segue into your questionnaire, It won't do."

"Dr. Lecter, you're an experienced clinical psychiatrist. Do you think I'm dumb enough to try to run some kind of mood scam on you? Give me some credit. I'm asking you to respond to the questionnaire, and you will or you won't. Would it hurt to look at the thing?"

"Officer Starling, have you read any of the papers coming out of Behavioral Science recently?"

"Yes."

"So have I. The FBI stupidly refuses to send me the Law Enforcement Bulletin, but I get it from secondhand dealers and I have the News from John Jay, and the psychiatric journals. They're dividing the people who practice serial murder into two groups-- organized and disorganized. What do you think of that?"

"It's… fundamental, they evidently--"

"Simplistic is the word you want. In fact, most psychology is puerile, Officer Starling, and that practiced in Behavioral Science is on a level with phrenology. Psychology doesn't get very good material to start with. Go to any college psychology department and look at the students and faculty: ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficient buffs. Hardly the best brains on the campus: Organized and disorganized-- a real bottom-feeder thought of that."

"How would you change the classification?"

"I wouldn't."

"Speaking of publications, I read your pieces on surgical addiction and left-side, right-side facial displays."

"Yes, they were first-rate," Dr. Lecter said.