Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter 1)

There was an air of dissatisfaction among the hunters—two major stakeouts took manpower that could be used elsewhere, and Graham’s presence at the trap each night would limit his movement to the Washington area.

Though Crawford’s judgment told him this was the best move, the whole procedure was too passive for his taste. He felt they were playing games with themselves in the dark of the moon with less than two weeks to go before it rose full again.

Sunday and Monday passed in curiously jerky time. The minutes dragged and the hours flew.

Spurgen, chief SWAT instructor at Quantico, circled the apartment block on Monday afternoon. Graham rode beside him. Crawford was in the backseat.

“The pedestrian traffic falls off around seven-fifteen. Everybody’s settled in for dinner,” Spurgen said. With his wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on his head, he looked like an infielder. “Give us a toot on the clear band tomorrow night when you cross the B&O railroad tracks. You ought to try to make it about eight-thirty, eight-forty or so.”

He pulled into the apartment parking lot. “This setup ain’t heaven, but it could be worse. You’ll park here tomorrow night. We’ll change the space you use every night after that, but it’ll always be on this side. It’s seventy-five yards to the apartment entrance. Let’s walk it.”

Spurgen, short and bandy-legged, went ahead of Graham and Crawford.

He’s looking for places where he could get the bad hop, Graham thought.

“The walk is probably where it’ll happen, if it happens,” the SWAT leader said. “See, from here the direct line from your car to the entrance, the natural route, is across the center of the lot. It’s as far as you can get from the line of cars that are here all day. He’ll have to come across open asphalt to get close. How well do you hear?”

“Pretty well,” Graham said. “Damn well on this parking lot.”

Spurgen looked for something in Graham’s face, found nothing he could recognize.

He stopped in the middle of the lot. “We’re reducing the wattage on these streetlights a little to make it tougher on a rifleman.”

“Tougher on your people too,” Crawford said.

“Two of ours have Startron night scopes,” Spurgen said. “I’ve got some clear spray I’ll ask you to use on your suit jackets, Will. By the way, I don’t care how hot it is, you will wear body armor each and every time. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Kevlar—what, Jack?—Second Chance?”

“Second Chance,” Crawford said.

“It’s pretty likely he’ll come up to you, probably from behind, or he may figure on meeting you and then turning around to shoot when he’s passed you,” Spurgen said. “Seven times he’s gone for the head shot, right? He’s seen that work. He’ll do it with you too if you give him the time. Don’t give him the time. After I show you a couple of things in the lobby and the flop, let’s go to the range. Can you do that?”

“He can do that,” Crawford said.

Spurgen was high priest on the range. He made Graham wear earplugs under the earmuffs and flashed targets at him from every angle. He was relieved to see that Graham did not carry the regulation .38, but he worried about the flash from the ported barrel. They worked for two hours. The man insisted on checking the cylinder crane and cylinder latch screws on Graham’s .44 when he had finished firing.

Graham showered and changed clothes to get the smell of gunsmoke off him before he drove to the bay for his last free night with Molly and Willy.

He took his wife and stepson to the grocery store after dinner and made a considerable to-do over selecting melons. He made sure they bought plenty of groceries—the old Tattler was still on the racks beside the checkout stands and he hoped Molly would not see the new issue coming in the morning. He didn’t want to tell her what was happening.

When she asked him what he wanted for dinner in the coming week, he had to say he’d be away, that he was going back to Birmingham. It was the first real lie he had ever told her and telling it made him feel as greasy as old currency.

He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical checkups for him and Willy, her controlled fear of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.

Pachelbel’s Canon filled the sun-drowned room where they learned each other and there was the exhilaration too big to hold and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey’s shadow: This is too good to live for long.

Molly switched her bag often from shoulder to shoulder in the grocery aisles, as though the gun in it weighed much more than its nineteen ounces.

Graham would have been offended had he heard the ugly thing he mumbled to the melons: “I have to put that bastard in a rubber sack, that’s all. I have to do that.”

Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop.

Molly smelled a rat. She and Graham did not speak after the lights were out. Molly dreamed of heavy crazy footsteps coming in a house of changing rooms.