The Silence of the Lambs - Страница 48

"I don't know nothing new to tell you," he said. "The policemen come back here night before last. They went back over my statement with me again. Read it back to me. 'Is that right? Is that right?' I told him, I said hell yes, if that wasn't right I wouldn't have told you in the first place."

"I'm trying to get an idea where the-- get an idea where the kidnapper might have seen Fredrica, Mr. Bimmel. Where he might have spotted her and decided to take her away."

"She went into Columbus on the bus to see about a job at that store there. The police said she got to the interview all right. She never came home. We don't know where else she went that day, The FBI got her Master Charge slips, but there wasn't nothing for that day. You know all that, don't you?"

"About the credit card, yes sir, I do. Mr. Bimmel, do you have Fredrica's things, are they here?

"Her room's in the top of the house."

"May I see?"

It took him a moment to decide where to lay down his hammer. "All right," he said, "come along."

CHAPTER 51

Jack Crawford's office in the FBI's Washington headquarters was painted an oppressive gray, but it had big windows.

Crawford stood at these windows with his clipboard held to the light, peering at a list off a God damned fuzzy dot-matrix printer that he'd told them to get rid of.

He'd come here from the funeral home and worked all morning, tweaking the Norwegians to hurry with their dental records on the missing seaman named Klaus, jerking San Diego's chain to check Benjamin Raspail's familiars at the Conservatory where he had taught, and stirring up Customs, which was supposed to be checking for import violations involving living insects.

Within five minutes of Crawford's arrival, FBI Assistant Director John Golby, head of the new interservice task force, stuck his head in the office for a moment to say "Jack, we're all thinking about you. Everybody appreciates you coming in. Has the service been set yet?"

"The wake's tomorrow evening. Service is Saturday at eleven o'clock."

Golby nodded. "There's a UNICEF memorial, Jack, a fund. You want it to read Phyllis or Bella, we'll do it any way you like."

"Bella, John. Let's make it Bella."

"Can I do anything for you, Jack?"

Crawford shook his head. "I'm just working. I'm just gonna work now."

"Right," Golby said. He waited the decent interval. "Frederick Chilton asked for federal protective custody."

"Grand. John, is somebody in Baltimore talking to Everett Yow, Raspail's lawyer? I mentioned him to you. He might know something about Raspail's friends."

"Yeah, they're on it this morning. I just sent Burroughs my memo on it. The Director's putting Lecter on the Most Wanted. Jack, if you need anything…" Golby raised his eyebrows and his hand and backed out of sight.

If you need anything.

Crawford turned to the windows. He had a fine view from his office. There was the handsome old Post Office building where he'd done some of his training. To the left was the old FBI headquarters. At. graduation, he'd filed thibugh J. Edgar Hoover's office with the others. Hoover stood on a little box and shook their hands in turn. That was the only time Crawford ever met the man. The next day he married Bella.

They had met in Livorno, Italy. He was Army, she NATO staff, and she was Phyllis then. They walked on the quays and a boatman called "Bella" across the glittering water and she was always Bella to him after that. She was only Phyllis when they disagreed.

Bella's dead. That should change the view from these windows. It wasn't right this view stayed the same. Had to fucking die on me. Jesus, kid. I knew it was coming but it smarts.

What do they say about forced retirement at fifty-five? You fall in love with the Bureau, but it doesn't fall in love with you. He'd seen it.

Thank God, Bella had saved him from that. He hoped she was somewhere today and that she was comfortable at last. He hoped she could see in his heart.

The phone was buzzing its intraoffice buzz.

"Mr. Crawford, a Dr. Danielson from--"

"Right." Punch. "Jack Crawford, Doctor."

"Is this line secure, Mr. Crawford?"

"Yes. On this end it is."

"You're not taping, are you?"

"No, Dr. Danielson. Tell me what's on your mind."

"I want to make it clear this has nothing to do with anybody who was ever a patient at Johns Hopkins."

"Understood."

"If anything comes of it, I want you to make it clear to the public he's not a transsexual, he had nothing to do with this institution."

"Fine. You got it. Absolutely." Come on, you stuffy bastard. Crawford would have said anything.

"He shoved Dr. Purvis down."

"Who, Dr. Danielson?"

"He applied to the program three years ago as John Grant of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania."

"Description?"

"Caucasian male, he was thirty-one. Six feet one, a hundred and ninety pounds. He came to be tested and did very well on the Wechsler intelligence scale-- bright normal-- but the psychological testing and the interviews were another story. In fact, his House-Tree-Person and his TAT were spot-on with the sheet you gave me. You let me think Alan Bloom authored that little theory, but it was Hannibal Lecter, wasn't it?"

"Go on with Grant, Doctor."

"The board would have turned him down anyway, but by the time we met to discuss it, the question was moot because the background checks got him."

"Got him how."

"We routinely check with the police in an applicant's hometown. The Harrisburg police were after him for two assaults on homosexual men. The last one nearly died. He'd given us an address that turned out to be a boarding house he stayed in from time to time. The police got his fingerprints there and a credit-card gas receipt with his license number on it. His name wasn't John Grant at all, he'd just told us that. About a week later he waited outside the building here and shoved Dr. Purvis down, just for spite."

"What was his name, Dr. Danielson?"

"I'd better spell it for you, it's J-A-M-E G-U-M-B."

CHAPTER 52

Fredrica Bimmel's house was three stories tall and gaunt, covered with asphalt shingles stained rusty where the gutters had spilled over. Volunteer maples growing in the gutters had stood up to the winter pretty well. The windows on the north side were covered with sheet plastic.

In a small parlor, very warm from a space heater, a middle-aged woman sat on a rug, playing with an infant.

"My wife," Bimmel said as they passed through the room. "We just got married Christmas."

"Hello," Starling said. The woman smiled vaguely in her direction.

Cold in the hall again and everywhere boxes stacked waist-high filling the rooms, passageways among them, cardboard cartons filled with lampshades and canning lids, picnic hampers, back numbers of the Reader's Digest and National Geographic, thick old tennis rackets, bed linens, a case of dartboards, fiber car-seat covers in a fifties plaid with the intense smell of mouse pee.

"We're moving pretty soon," Mr. Bimmel said.

The stuff near the windows was bleached by the sun, the boxes stacked for years and bellied with age, the random rugs worn bare in the paths through the rooms.

Sunlight dappled the bannister as Starling climbed the stairs behind Fredrica's father. His clothes smelled stale in the cold air. She could see sunlight coming through the sagging ceiling at the top of the stairwell. The cartons stacked on the landing were covered with plastic.

Fredrica's room was small, under the eaves on the third floor.

"You want me anymore?"

"Later, I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Bimmel. What about Fredrica's mother?" The file said "deceased," it didn't say when.

"What do you mean, what about her? She died when Fredrica was twelve."

"I see."

"Did you think that was Fredrica's mother downstairs? After I told you we just been married since Christmas? That what you thought is it? I guess the law's used to handling a different class of people, missy. She never knew Fredrica at all."

"Mr. Bimmel, is the room pretty much like Fredrica left it?"

The anger wandered somewhere else In him.

"Yah," he said softly. "We just left it alone. Nobody much could wear her stuff. Plug in the heater if you want it. Remember and unplug it before you come down."

He didn't want to see the room. He left her on the landing.

Starling stood for a moment with her hand on the cold porcelain knob. She needed to organize a little, before her head was full of Fredrica's things.

Okay, the premise is Buffalo Bill did Fredrica first, weighted her and hid her well, in a river far from home. He hid her better than the others-- she was the only one weighted-- because he wanted the later ones found first. He wanted the idea of random selection of victims in widely scattered towns well established before Fredrica, of Belvedere, was found. It was important to take attention away from Belvedere. Because he lives here, or maybe in Columbus.

He started with Fredrica because he coveted her hide. We don't begin to covet with imagined things. Coveting is a very literal sin-- we begin to covet with tangibles, we begin with what we see every day. He saw Fredrica in the course of his daily life. He saw her in the course of her daily life.

What was the course of Fredrica's daily life? All right…

Starling pushed the door open. Here it was, this still room smelling of mildew in the cold. On the wall, last year's calendar was forever turned to April. Fredrica had been dead ten months.