“No, nothing at all. Does the FBI have any ideas? The police here don’t seem to know the first thing. Do they have a description, or fingerprints?”
Out of the folds in the back of Mr. Gumb’s robe crawled a Death’s-head Moth. It stopped in the center of his back, about where his heart would be, and adjusted its wings.
Starling dropped her notebook into the bag.
Mister Gumb. Thank God my coat’s open. Talk out of here, go to a phone. No. He knows I’m FBI, I let him out of my sight he’ll kill her. Do her kidneys. They find him, they fall on him. His phone. Don’t see it. Not in here, ask for his phone. Get the connection, then throw down on him. Make him lie facedown, wait for the cops. That’s it, do it. He’s turning around.
“Here’s the number,” he said. He had a business card.
Take it? No.
“Good, thank you. Mr. Gordon, do you have a telephone I could use?”
As he put the card on the table, the moth flew. It came from behind him, past his head and lit between them, on a cabinet above the sink.
He looked at it. When she didn’t look at it, when her eyes never left his face, he knew.
Their eyes met and they knew each other.
Mr. Gumb tilted his head a little to the side. He smiled. “I have a cordless phone in the pantry, I’ll get it for you.”
No! Do it. She went for the gun, one smooth move she’d done four thousand times and it was right where it was supposed to be, good two-hand hold, her world the front sight and the center of his chest. “Freeze.”
He pursed his lips.
“Now. Slowly. Put up your hands.”
Move him outside, keep the table between us. Walk him to the front. Facedown in the middle of the street and hold up the badge.
“Mr. Gub— Mr. Gumb, you’re under arrest. I want you to walk slowly outside for me.”
Instead, he walked out of the room. If he had reached for his pocket, reached behind him, if she’d seen a weapon, she cou
ld have fired. He just walked out of the room.
She heard him down the basement stairs fast, she around the table and to the door at the top of the stairwell. He was gone, the stairwell brightly lit and empty. Trap. Be a sitting duck on the stairs.
From the basement then a thin paper cut of a scream.
She didn’t like the stairs, didn’t like the stairs, Clarice Starling in the quick where you give it or you don’t.
Catherine Martin screamed again, he’s killing her and Starling went down them anyway, one hand on the bannister, gun arm out the gun just under her line of vision, floor below bounding over the gunsight, gun arm swinging with her head as she tried to cover the two facing doors open at the bottom of the staircase.
Lights blazing in the basement, she couldn’t go through one door without turning her back on the other, do it quick then, to the left toward the scream. Into the sand-floored oubliette room, clearing the doorframe fast, eyes wider than they had ever been. Only place to hide was behind the well, she sliding sideways around the wall, both hands on the gun, arms out straight, a little pressure on the trigger, on around the well and nobody behind it.
A small scream rising from the well like thin smoke. Yipping now, a dog. She approached the well, eyes on the door, got to the rim, looked over the edge. Saw the girl, looked up again, down again, said what she was trained to say, calm the hostage:
“FBI, you’re safe.”
“Safe SHIT, he’s got a gun. Getmeout. GETMEOUT.”
“Catherine, you’ll be all right. Shut up. Do you know where he is?”
“GETMEOUT, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHERE HE IS, GETMEOUT.”
“I’ll get you out. Be quiet. Help me. Be quiet so I can hear. Try and shut that dog up.”
Braced behind the well, covering the door, her heart pounded and her breath blew dust off the stone. She could not leave Catherine Martin to get help when she didn’t know where Gumb was. She moved up to the door and took cover behind the frame. She could see across the foot of the stairs and into part of the workroom beyond.