Red Dragon (10 page)

“I’m glad you came. It’s been what now, three years? My callers are all professional. Banal clinical psychiatrists and grasping second-rate
doctors
of psychology from silo colleges somewhere. Pencil lickers trying to protect their tenure with pieces in the journals.”

“Dr. Bloom showed me your article on surgical addiction in
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
”

“And?”

“Very interesting, even to a layman.”

“A layman . . . layman—layman. Interesting term,” Lecter said. “So many learned fellows going about. So many
experts
on government grants. And you say you’re a layman. But it was you who caught me, wasn’t it, Will? Do you know how you did it?”

“I’m sure you’ve read the transcript. It’s all in there.”

“No it’s not. Do you know how you did it, Will?”

“It’s in the transcript. What does it matter now?”

“It doesn’t matter to
me
, Will.”

“I want you to help me, Dr. Lecter.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“It’s about Atlanta and Birmingham.”

“Yes.”

“You read about it, I’m sure.”

“I’ve read the papers. I can’t clip them. They won’t let me have scissors, of course. Sometimes they threaten me with loss of books, you know. I wouldn’t want them to think I was dwelling on anything morbid.” He laughed. Dr. Lecter has small white teeth. “You want to know how he’s choosing them, don’t you?”

“I thought you would have some ideas. I’m asking you to tell me what they are.”

“Why should I?”

Graham had anticipated the question. A reason to stop multiple murders would not occur readily to Dr. Lecter.

“There are things you don’t have,” Graham said. “Research materials, filmstrips even. I’d speak to the chief of staff.”

“Chilton. You must have seen him when you came in. Gruesome, isn’t it? Tell me the truth, he fumbles at your head like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle, doesn’t he? Watched you out of the corner of his eye. Picked
that
up, didn’t you? You may not believe this, but he actually tried to give
me
a Thematic Apperception Test. He was sitting there just like the Cheshire cat waiting for Mf 13 to come up. Ha. Forgive me, I forget that you’re not among the anointed. It’s a card with a woman in bed and a man in the foreground. I was supposed to avoid a sexual interpretation. I laughed. He puffed up and told everybody I avoided prison with a Ganser syndrome—never mind, it’s boring.”

“You’d have access to the AMA filmstrip library.”

“I don’t think you’d get me the things I want.”

“Try me.”

“I have quite enough to read as it is.”

“You’d get to see the file on this case. There’s another reason.”

“Pray.”

“I thought you might be curious to find out if you’re smarter than the person I’m looking for.”

“Then, by implication, you think you are smarter than I am, since you caught me.”

“No. I know I’m not smarter than you are.”

“Then how did you catch me, Will?”

“You had disadvantages.”

“What disadvantages?”

“Passion. And you’re insane.”

“You’re very tan, Will.”

Graham did not answer.

“Your hands are rough. They don’t look like a cop’s hands anymore. That shaving lotion is something a child would select. It has a ship on the bottle, doesn’t it?” Dr. Lecter seldom holds his head upright. He tilts it as he asks a question, as though he were screwing an auger of curiosity into your face. Another silence, and Lecter said, “Don’t think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

“I don’t think I’ll persuade you. You’ll do it or you won’t. Dr. Bloom is working on it anyway, and he’s the most—”

“Do you have the file with you?”

“Yes.”

“And pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Let me have them, and I might consider it.”

“No.”

“Do you dream much, Will?”

“Good-bye, Dr. Lecter.”

“You haven’t threatened to take away my books yet.”

Graham walked away.

“Let me have the file, then. I’ll tell you what I think.”

Graham had to pack the abridged file tightly into the sliding tray. Lecter pulled it through.

“There’s a summary on top. You can read that now,” Graham said.

“Do you mind if I do it privately? Give me an hour.”

Graham waited on a tired plastic couch in a grim lounge. Orderlies came in for coffee. He did not speak to them. He stared at small objects in the room and was glad they held still in his vision. He had to go to the rest room twice. He was numb.

The turnkey admitted him to the maximum-security section again.

Lecter sat at his table, his eyes filmed with thought. Graham knew he had spent most of the hour with the pictures.

“This is a very shy boy, Will. I’d love to meet him. . . . Have you considered the possibility that he’s disfigured? Or that he may believe he’s disfigured?”

“The mirrors.”

“Yes. You notice he smashed all the mirrors in the houses, not just enough to get the pieces he wanted. He doesn’t just put the shards in place for the damage they cause. They’re set so he can see himself. In their eyes—Mrs. Jacobi and . . . What was the other name?”

“Mrs. Leeds.”

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting,” Graham said.

“It’s not ‘interesting.’ You’d thought of that before.”

“I had considered it.”

“You just came here to look at me. Just to get the old scent again, didn’t you? Why don’t you just smell yourself?”

“I want your opinion.”

“I don’t have one right now.”

“When you do have one, I’d like to hear it.”

“May I keep the file?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Graham said.

“Why are there no descriptions of the grounds? Here we have frontal views of the houses, floor plans, diagrams of the rooms where the deaths occurred, and little mention of the grounds. What were the yards like?”

“Big backyards, fenced, with some hedges. Why?”

“Because, my dear Will, if this pilgrim feels a special relationship with the moon, he might like to go outside and look at it. Before he tidies himself up, you understand. Have you seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black. Of course, it keeps the distinctive sheen. If one were nude, say, it would be better to have outdoor privacy for that sort of thing. One must show some consideration for the neighbors, hmmmm?”

“You think the yard might be a factor when he selects victims?”

“Oh yes. And there will be more victims, of course. Let me keep the file, Will. I’ll study it. When you get more files, I’d like to see them too. You can call me. On the rare occasions when my lawyer calls, they bring me a telephone. They used to patch him through on the intercom, but everyone listened of course. Would you like to give me your home number?”

“No.”

“Do you know how you caught me, Will?”

“Good-bye, Dr. Lecter. You can leave messages for me at the number on the file.” Graham walked away.

“Do you know how you caught me?”

Graham was out of Lecter’s sight now, and he walked faster toward the far steel door.

“The reason you caught me is that we’re
just alike
” was the last thing Graham heard as the steel door closed behind him.

He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness. Walking with his head down, speaking to no one, he could hear his blood like a hollow drumming of wings. It seemed a very short distance to the outside. This was only a building; there were only five doors between Lecter and the outside. He had the absurd feeling that Lecter had walked out with him. He stopped outside the entrance and looked around him, assuring himself that he was alone.

From a car across the street, his long lens propped on the window sill, Freddy Lounds got a nice profile shot of Graham in the doorway and the words in stone above him: “Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”

As it turned out,
The National Tattler
cropped the picture to just Graham’s face and the last two words in the stone.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter lay on his cot with the cell lights down after Graham left him. Several hours passed.

For a while he had textures; the weave of the pillowcase against his hands clasped behind his head, the smooth membrane that lined his cheek.

Then he had odors and let his mind play over them. Some were real, some were not. They had put Clorox in the drains; semen. They were serving chili down the hall; sweat-stiffened khaki. Graham would not give him his home telephone number; the bitter green smell of cut cocklebur and teaweed.

Lecter sat up. The man might have been civil. His thoughts had the warm brass smell of an electric clock.

Lecter blinked several times, and his eyebrows rose. He turned up the lights and wrote a note to Chilton asking for a telephone to call his counsel.

Lecter was entitled by law to speak with his lawyer in privacy and he hadn’t abused the right. Since Chilton would never allow him to go to the telephone, the telephone was brought to him.

Two guards brought it, unrolling a long cord from the telephone jack at their desk. One of the guards had the keys. The other held a can of Mace.

“Go to the back of the cell, Dr. Lecter. Face the wall. If you turn around or approach the barrier before you hear the lock snap, I’ll Mace you in the face. Understand?”

“Yes, indeed,” Lecter said. “Thank you so much for bringing the telephone.”

He had to reach through the nylon net to dial. Chicago information gave him numbers for the University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry and Dr. Alan Bloom’s office number. He dialed the psychiatry department switchboard.

“I’m trying to reach Dr. Alan Bloom.”

“I’m not sure he’s in today, but I’ll connect you.”

“Just a second, I’m supposed to know his secretary’s name and I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten it.”

“Linda King. Just a moment.”

“Thank you.”

The telephone rang eight times before it was picked up.

“Linda King’s desk.”

“Hi, Linda?”

“Linda doesn’t come in on Saturday.”

Dr. Lecter had counted on that. “Maybe you could help me, if you don’t mind. This is Bob Greer at Blaine and Edwards Publishing Company. Dr. Bloom asked me to send a copy of the Overholser book,
The Psychiatrist and the Law
, to Will Graham, and Linda was supposed to send me the address and phone number, but she never did.”

“I’m just a graduate assistant, she’ll be in on Mon—”

“I have to catch Federal Express with it in about five minutes, and I hate to bother Dr. Bloom about it at home because he told Linda to send it and I don’t want to get her in hot water. It’s right there in her Rolodex or whatever. I’ll dance at your wedding if you’ll read it to me.”

“She doesn’t have a Rolodex.”

“How about a Call Caddy with the slide on the side?”

“Yes.”

“Be a darling and slide that rascal and I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“What was the name?”

“Graham. Will Graham.”

“All right, his home number is 305 JL5-7002.”

“I’m supposed to mail it to his house.”

“It doesn’t give the address of his house.”

“What does it have?”

“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tenth and Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. Oh, and Post Office Box 3680, Marathon, Florida.”

“That’s fine, you’re an angel.”

“You’re welcome.”

Lecter felt much better. He thought he might surprise Graham with a call sometime, or if the man couldn’t be civil, he might have a hospital-supply house mail Graham a colostomy bag for old times’ sake.

Seven hundred miles to the southwest, in the cafeteria at Gateway Film Laboratory of St. Louis, Francis Dolarhyde was waiting for a hamburger. The entrées offered in the steam table were filmed over. He stood beside the cash register and sipped coffee from a paper cup.

A red-haired young woman wearing a laboratory smock came into the cafeteria and studied the candy machine. She looked at Francis Dolarhyde’s back several times and pursed her lips. Finally she walked over to him and said, “Mr. D.?”

Dolarhyde turned. He always wore red goggles outside the darkroom. She kept her eyes on the nosepiece of the goggles.

“Will you sit down with me a minute? I want to tell you something.”

“What can you tell me, Eileen?”

“That I’m really sorry. Bob was just really drunk and, you know, clowning around. He didn’t mean anything. Please come sit down. Just for a minute. Will you do that?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” Dolarhyde never said “yes,” as he had trouble with the sibilant /s/.

They sat. She twisted a napkin in her hands.

“Everybody was having a good time at the party and we were glad you came by,” she said. “Real glad, and surprised too. You know how Bob is, he does voices all the time—he ought to be on the radio. He did two or three accents, telling jokes and all—he can talk just like a Negro. When he did that other voice, he didn’t mean to make you feel bad. He was too drunk to know who was there.”

“They were all laughing and then they . . . didn’t laugh.” Dolarhyde never said “stopped” because of the fricative /s/.

“That’s when Bob realized what he had done.”

“He went on, though.”

“I know it,” she said, managing to look from her napkin to his goggles without lingering on the way. “I got on his case about it too. He said he didn’t mean anything, he just saw he was into it and tried to keep up the joke. You saw how red his face got.”

“He invited me to . . . perform a duet with him.”

“He hugged you and tried to put his arm around you. He wanted you to laugh it off, Mr. D.”