The Silence of the Lambs - Страница 55

He was going through the overnight telex traffic and watching the early news in his office when Starling pressed her nose to the glass of the door. He dumped some reports out of a chair for her and they watched the news together without saying anything. Here it came.

The outside of Jame Gumb's old building in Belvedere with its empty storefront and soaped windows covered with heavy gates. Starling hardly recognized it.

"Dungeon of Horrors," the news leader called it.

Harsh, jostled pictures of the well and the basement, still cameras held up before the television camera, and angry firemen waving the photographers back. Moths crazed by the television lights, flying into the lights, a moth on the floor on its back, wings beating down to a final tremor.

Catherine Martin refusing a stretcher and walking to the ambulance with a policeman's coat around her, the dog sticking its face out between the lapels.

A side view of Starling walking fast to a car, her head down, hands in the pockets of her coat.

The film was edited to exclude some of the more grisly objects. In the far reaches of the basement, the cameras could show only the low, lime-sprinkled thresholds of the chambers holding Gumb's tableaux. The body count in that part of the basement stood at six so far.

Twice Crawford heard Starling expel air through her nose. The news went to a commercial break.

"Good morning, Starling."

"Hello," she said, as though it were later in the day.

"The U.S. Attorney in Columbus faxed me your depositions overnight. You'll have to sign some copies for him… So you went from Fredrica Bimmel's house to Stacy Hubka, and then to the Burdine woman at the store Bimmel sewed for, Richards' Fashions, and Mrs. Burdine gave you Mrs. Lippman's old address, the building there."

Stalling nodded. "Stacy Hubka had been by the place a couple of times to pick up Fredrica, but Stacy's boyfriend was driving and her directions were vague. Mrs. Burdine had the address."

"Mrs. Burdine never mentioned a man at Mrs. Lippman's?"

"No."

The television news had film from Bethesda Naval Hospital. Senator Ruth Martin's face framed in a limousine window.

"Catherine was rational last night, yes. She's sleeping, she's sedated right now. We're counting our blessings. No, as I said before, she's suffering from shock, but she's rational. Just bruises, and her finger is broken. And she's dehydrated as well. Thank you." She poked her chauffeur in the back. "Thank you. No, she mentioned the dog to me last night, I don't know what we'll do about it, we already have two dogs."

The story closed with a nothing quote from a stress specialist who would be talking with Catherine Martin later in the day to assess emotional damage.

Crawford shut it off.

"How're you hittin 'em, Starling?"

"Kind of numb… you too?"

Crawford nodded, quickly moved along. "Senator Martin's been on the phone overnight. She wants to come see you. Catherine does too, as soon as she can travel."

"I'm always home."

"Krendler too, he wants to come down here. He asked for his memo back."

"Come to think of it, I'm not always home."

"Here's some free advice. Use Senator Martin. Let her tell you how grateful she is, let her hand you the markers. Do it soon. Gratitude has a short half-life. You'll need her one of these days, the way you act."

"That's what Ardelia says."

"Your roomie, Mapp? The Superintendent told me Mapp's set to cram you for your makeup exams on Monday. She just pulled a point and a half ahead of her archrival, 'Stringfellow, he tells me."'

"For valedictorian?"

"He's tough, though, Stringfellow-- he's saying she can't hold him off."

"He best bring his lunch."

In the clutter on Crawford's desk was the origami chicken Dr. Lecter had folded. Crawford worked the tail up and down. The chicken pecked.

"Lecter's gone platinum-- he's at the top of everybody's Most Wanted list," he said. "Still, he could be out for a while. Off the post, you need some good habits."

She nodded.

"He's busy now," Crawford said, "but when he's not busy, he'll entertain himself. We need to be clear on this: You know he'd do it to you, just like he'd do anybody else."

"I don't think he'd ever bushwhack me-- it's rude, and he wouldn't get to ask any questions that way. Sure he'd do it as soon as I bored him."

"Maintain good habits is all I'm saying. When you go off the post, flag your three-card-- no phone queries on your whereabouts without positive ID. I want to put a trace-alert on your telephone, if you don't mind. It'll be private unless you push the button."

"I don't look for him to come after me, Mr. Crawford."

"But you heard what I said."

"I did. I did hear."

"Take these depositions and look ' em over. Add if you want to. We'll witness your' signatures here when you're ready. Starling, I'm proud of you. So is Brigham, so is the Director." It sounded stiff, not like he wanted it to sound.

He went to his office door. She was going away from him, down the deserted hall. He managed to hail her from his berg of grief: "Starling, your father sees you."

CHAPTER 59

Jame Gumb was news for weeks after he was lowered into his final hole.

Reporters pieced together his history, beginning with the records of Sacramento County:

His mother had been carrying him a month when she failed to place in the Miss Sacramento Contest in 1948. The "Jame" on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct.

When her acting career failed to materialize, his mother went into an alcoholic decline; Gumb was two when Los Angeles County placed him in a foster home.

At least two scholarly journals explained that this unhappy childhood was the reason he killed women in his basement for their skins. The words crazy and evil do not appear in either article.

The film of the beauty contest that Jame Gumb watched as an adult was real footage of his mother, but the woman in the swimming pool film was not his mother, comparative measurements revealed.

Gumb's grandparents retrieved him from an unsatisfactory foster home when he was ten, and he killed them two years later.

Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation taught Gumb to be a tailor during his years at the psychiatric hospital. He demonstrated definite aptitude for the work.

Gumb's employment record is broken and incomplete. Reporters found at least two restaurants where he worked off the books, and he worked sporadically in the clothing business. It has not been proven that he killed during this period, but Benjamin Raspail said he did.

He was working at the curio store where the butterfly ornaments were made when he met Raspail, and he lived off the musician for some time. It was then that Gumb became obsessed with moths and butterflies and the changes they go through.

After Raspail left him, Gumb killed Raspail's next lover, Klaus, beheaded and partially flayed him.

Later he dropped in on Raspail in the East. Raspail, ever thrilled by bad boys, introduced him to Dr. Lecter.

This was proven in the week after Gumb's death when the FBI seized from Raspail's next of kin the tapes of Raspail's therapy sessions with Dr. Lecter.

Years ago, when Dr. Lecter was declared insane, the therapy-session tapes had been turned over to the families of the victims to be destroyed. But Raspail's wrangling relatives kept the tapes, hoping to use them to attack Raspail's will. They had lost interest listening to the early tapes, which are only Raspail's boring reminiscences of school life. After the news coverage of Jame Gumb, the Raspail family listened to the rest. When the relatives called the lawyer Everett Yow and threatened to use the tapes in a renewed assault on Raspail's will, Yow called Clarice Starling.

The tapes include the final session, when Lecter killed Raspail. More important, they reveal how much Raspail told Lecter about Jame Gumb:

Raspail told Dr. Lecter that Gumb was obsessed with moths, that he had flayed people in the past, that he had killed Klaus, that he had a job with the Mr. Hide leather-goods company in Calumet City, but was taking money from an old lady in Belvedere, Ohio, who had made linings for Mr. Hide, Inc. One day Gumb would take everything the old lady had, Raspail predicted.

"When Lecter read that the first victim was from Belvedere and she was flayed, he knew who was doing it," Crawford told Starling as they listened together to the tape. "He'd have given you Gumb and looked like a genius if Chilton had stayed out of it."

"He hinted to me by writing in the file that the sites were too random," Starling said. "And in Memphis he asked me if I sew. What did he want to happen?"

"He wanted to amuse himself," Crawford said. "He's been amusing himself for a long, long time."

No tape of Jame Gumb was ever found, and his activities in the years after Raspail's death were established piecemeal through business correspondence, gas receipts, interviews with boutique owners.

When Mrs. Lippman died on a trip to Florida with Gumb, he inherited everything-- the old building with its living quarters and empty storefront and vast basement, and a comfortable amount of money. He stopped working for Mr. Hide, but maintained an apartment in Calumet City for a while, and used the business address to receive packages in the John Grant name. He kept favored customers, and continued to travel to boutiques around the country, as he had for Mr. Hide, measuring for custom garments he made in Belvedere. He used his trips to scout for victims and to dump them when they were used up-- the brown van droning for hours on the Interstate with finished leather garments swaying on racks in the back above the rubberized body bag on the floor.