Red Dragon (5 page)

“Snaggletoothed son of a bitch,” somebody mumbled.

“How do you know for sure it was the perpetrator that bit the cheese, Doc?” a tall detective in the front row asked.

Princi disliked being called “Doc,” but he swallowed it. “Saliva washes from the cheese and from the bite wounds matched for blood type,” he said. “The victims’ teeth and blood type didn’t match.”

“Fine, Doctor,” Springfield said. “We’ll pass out pictures of the teeth to show around.”

“What about giving it to the papers?” The public-relations officer, Simpkins, was speaking. “A ‘have-you-seen-these-teeth’ sort of thing.”

“I see no objection to that,” Springfield said. “What about it, Commissioner?”

Lewis nodded.

Simpkins was not through. “Dr. Princi, the press is going to ask why it took four days to get this dental representation you have here. And why it all had to be done in Washington.”

Special Agent Crawford studied the button on his ballpoint pen.

Princi reddened but his voice was calm. “Bite marks on flesh are distorted when a body is moved, Mr. Simpson—”

“Simpkins.”

“Simpkins, then. We couldn’t make this using only the bite marks on the victims. That is the importance of the cheese. Cheese is relatively solid, but tricky to cast. You have to oil it first to keep the moisture out of the casting medium. Usually you get one shot at it. The Smithsonian has done it for the FBI crime lab before. They’re better equipped to do a face bow registration and they have an anatomical articulator. They have a consulting forensic odontologist. We don’t. Anything else?”

“Would it be fair to say that the delay was caused by the FBI lab and not here?”

Princi turned on him. “What it would be fair to say, Mr. Simpkins, is that a federal investigator, Special Agent Crawford, found the cheese in the refrigerator two days ago—after your people had been through the place. He expedited the lab work at my request. It would be fair to say I’m relieved that it wasn’t one of you that bit the goddamned thing.”

Commissioner Lewis broke in, his heavy voice booming in the squad room. “Nobody’s questioning your judgment, Dr. Princi. Simpkins, the last thing we need is to start a pissing contest with the FBI. Let’s get on with it.”

“We’re all after the same thing,” Springfield said. “Jack, do you fellows want to add anything?”

Crawford took the floor. The faces he saw were not entirely friendly. He had to do something about that.

“I just want to clear the air, Chief. Years ago there was a lot of rivalry about who got the collar. Each side, federal and local, held out on the other. It made a gap that crooks slipped through. That’s not Bureau policy now, and it’s not my policy. I don’t give a damn who gets the collar. Neither does Investigator Graham. That’s him sitting back there, if some of you are wondering. If the man who did this is run over by a garbage truck, it would suit me just fine as long as it puts him off the street. I think you feel the same way.”

Crawford looked over the detectives and hoped they were mollified. He hoped they wouldn’t hoard leads. Commissioner Lewis was talking to him.

“Investigator Graham has worked on this kind of thing before.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you add anything, Mr. Graham, suggest anything?”

Crawford raised his eyebrows at Graham.

“Would you come up to the front?” Springfield said.

Graham wished he had been given the chance to talk to Springfield in private. He didn’t want to go to the front. He went, though.

Rumpled and sun-blasted, Graham didn’t look like a federal investigator. Springfield thought he looked more like a house painter who had put on a suit to appear in court.

The detectives shifted from one buttock to the other.

When Graham turned to face the room, the ice-blue eyes were startling in his brown face.

“Just a couple of things,” he said. “We can’t assume he’s a former mental patient or somebody with a record of sex offenses. There’s a high probability that he doesn’t have any kind of record. If he does, it’s more likely to be breaking and entering than a minor sex offense.

“He may have a history of biting in lesser assaults—bar fights or child abuse. The biggest help we’ll have on that will come from emergency-room personnel and the child-welfare people.

“Any bad bite they can remember is worth checking, regardless of who was bitten or how they said it happened. That’s all I have.”

The tall detective in the front row raised his hand and spoke at the same time.

“But he only bit women so far, right?”

“That’s all we know about. He bites a lot, though. Six bad ones in Mrs. Leeds, eight in Mrs. Jacobi. That’s way above average.”

“What’s average?”

“In a sex murder, three. He likes to bite.”

“Women.”

“Most of the time in sex assaults the bite mark has a livid spot in the center, a suck mark. These don’t. Dr. Princi mentioned it in his autopsy report, and I saw it at the morgue. No suck marks. For him biting may be a fighting pattern as much as sexual behavior.”

“Pretty thin,” the detective said.

“It’s worth checking,” Graham said. “Any bite is worth checking. People lie about how it happened. Parents of a bitten child will claim an animal did it and let the child take rabies shots to cover for a snapper in the family—you’ve all seen that. It’s worth asking at the hospitals—who’s been referred for rabies shots.

“That’s all I have.” Graham’s thigh muscles fluttered with fatigue when he sat down.

“It’s worth asking, and we’ll ask,” Chief of Detectives Springfield said. “Now. The Safe and Loft Squad works the neighborhood along with Larceny. Work the dog angle. You’ll see the update and the picture in the file. Find out if any stranger was seen with the dog. Vice and Narcotics, take the K-Y cowboys and the leather bars after you finish the day tour. Marcus and Whitman—heads up at the funeral. Do you have relatives, friends of the family, lined up to spot for you? Good. What about the photographer? All right. Turn in the funeral guest book to R & I. They’ve got the one from Birmingham already. The rest of the assignments are on the sheet. Let’s go.”

“One other thing,” Commissioner Lewis said. The detectives sank back in their seats. “I have heard officers in this command referring to the killer as the ‘Tooth Fairy.’ I don’t care what you call him among yourselves, I realize you have to call him something. But I had better not hear any police officer refer to him as the Tooth Fairy in public. It sounds flippant. Neither will you use that name on any internal memoranda.

“That’s all.”

Crawford and Graham followed Springfield back to his office. The chief of detectives gave them coffee while Crawford checked in with the switchboard and jotted down his messages.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you when you got here yesterday,” Springfield said to Graham. “This place has been a fucking madhouse. It’s Will, right? Did the boys give you everything you need?”

“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 busy work. 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?”

“R ight.”

“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 thought.

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.