Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter 1)

Which way to go? Sometimes it was easier for them if you were impersonal. With Reba McClane, he didn’t think so.

He told her who he was.

“Do you know him?” she asked the policewoman.

Graham passed the officer his credentials. She didn’t need them.

“I know he’s a federal officer, Miss McClane.”

She told him everything, finally. All about her time with Francis Dolarhyde. Her throat was sore, and she stopped frequently to suck cracked ice.

He asked her the unpleasant questions and she took him through it, once waving him out the door while the policewoman held the basin to catch her breakfast.

She was pale and her face was scrubbed and shiny when he came back into the room.

He asked the last of it and closed his notebook.

“I won’t put you through this again,” he said, “but I’d like to come back by. Just to say hi and see how you’re doing.”

“How could you help it?—a charmer like me.”

For the first time he saw tears and realized where it ate her.

“Would you excuse us for a minute, officer?” Graham said. He took Reba’s hand.

“Look here. There was plenty wrong with Dolarhyde, but there’s nothing wrong with you. You said he was kind and thoughtful to you. I believe it. That’s what you brought out in him. At the end, he couldn’t kill you and he couldn’t watch you die. People who study this kind of thing say he was trying to stop. Why? Because you helped him. That probably saved some lives. You didn’t draw a freak. You drew a man with a freak on his back. Nothing wrong with you, kid. If you let yourself believe there is, you’re a sap. I’m coming back to see you in a day or so. I have to look at cops all the time, and I need relief—try to do something about your hair there.”

She shook her head and waved him toward the door. Maybe she grinned a little, he couldn’t be sure.

Graham called Molly from the St. Louis FBI office. Willy’s grandfather answered the telephone.

“It’s Will Graham, Mama,” he said. “Hello, Mr. Graham.”

Willy’s grandparents always called him “Mr. Graham.”

“Mama said he killed himself. She was looking at Donahue and they broke in with it. Damn lucky thing. Saved you fellows a lot of trouble catching him. Saves us taxpayers footing any more bills for this thing too. Was he really white?”

“Yes sir. Blond. Looked Scandinavian.”

Willy’s grandparents were Scandinavian.

“May I speak to Molly, please?”

“Are you going back down to Florida now?”

“Soon. Is Molly there?”

“Mama, he wants to speak to Molly. She’s in the bathroom, Mr. Graham. My grandboy’s eating breakfast again. Been out riding in that good air. You ought to see that little booger eat. I bet he’s gained ten pounds. Here she is.”

“Hello.”

“Hi, hotshot.”

“Good news, huh?”

“Looks like it.”

“I was out in the garden. Mamamma came out and told me when she saw it on TV. When did you find out?”