Starling took off her jewelry, a plain bracelet and a gold stud in her good ear, and put them in her bag. Her watch was plastic, okay. She couldn’t do much about the rest of her appearance.
“Inelle Corey? Want some coffee?” Starling was carrying two cups.
“It’s pronounced Eyenelle. I don’t drink coffee.”
“I’ll drink both of them, want something else? I’m Clarice Starling.”
“I don’t care for anything. You want to show me some picture ID?”
“Absolutely,” Starling said. “Ms. Corey—may I call you Inelle?”
The woman shrugged.
“Inelle, I need some help on a matter that really doesn’t involve you personally at all. I just need guidance in finding some records from the Baltimore State Hospital.”
Inelle Corey speaks with exaggerated precision to express righteousness or anger.
“We have went through this with the state board at the time of closure, Miss—”
“Starling.”
“Miss Starling. You will find that not a patient went out of that hospital without a folder. You will find that not a folder went out of that hospital that was not approved by a supervisor. As far as the deceased go, the Health Department did not need their folders, the Bureau of Vital Statistics did not want their folders, and as far as I know, the dead folders, that is the folders of the deceased, remained at the Baltimore State Hospital past my separation date and I was about the last one out. The elopements went to the city police and the sheriff’s department.”
“Elopements?”
“That’s when somebody runs off. Trusties took off sometimes.”
“Would Dr. Hannibal Lecter be carried as an elopement? Do you think his records might have gone to law enforcement?”
“He was not an elopement. He was never carried as our elopement. He was not in our custody when he took off. I went down there to the bottom and looked at Dr. Lecter one time, showed him to my sister when she was here with the boys. I feel sort of nasty and cold when I think about it. He stirred up one of those other ones to throw some”—she lowered her voice—“jism on us. Do you know what that is?”
“I’ve heard the term,” Starling said. “Was it Mr. Miggs, by any chance? He had a good arm.”
“I’ve shut it out of my mind. I remember you. You came to the hospital and talked to Fred—Dr. Chilton— and went down there in that basement with Lecter, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Frederick Chilton was the director of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who went missing while on vacation after Dr. Lecter’s escape.
“You know Fred disappeared.”
“Yes, I heard that.”
Ms. Corey developed quick, bright tears. “He was my fiancé,” she said. “He was gone, and then the hospital closed, it was just like the roof had fell in on me. If I hadn’t had my church I could not have got by.”
“I’m sorry,” Starling said. “You have a good job now.”
“But I don’t have Fred. He was a fine, fine man. We shared a love, a love you don’t find everday. He was voted Boy of the Year in Canton when he was in high school.”
“Well, I’ll be. Let me ask you this, Inelle, did he keep the records in his office, or were they out in reception where your desk—”
“They were in the wall cabinets in his office and then they got so many we got big filing cabinets out in the reception area. They was always locked, of course. When we moved out, they moved in the methadone clinic on a temporary basis and a lot of stuff was moved around.”
; “Did you ever see and handle Dr. Lecter’s file?”
“Sure.”