Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter 1)

Now Mrs. Jacobi brought a large envelope to her son. A long ribbon trailed from it. Donald Jacobi opened the envelope and took out a big birthday card. He looked up at the camera and turned the card around. It said “Happy Birthday—follow the ribbon.”

Bouncing progress as the camera followed the procession to the kitchen. A door there, fastened with a hook. Down the basement stairs, Donald first, then the others, following the ribbon down the steps. The end of the ribbon was tied around the handlebars of a ten-speed bicycle.

Graham wondered why they hadn’t given him the bike outdoors.

A jumpy cut to the next scene, and his question was answered. Outdoors now, and clearly it had been raining hard. Water stood in the yard. The house looked different. Realtor Geehan had changed the color when he did it over after the murders. The outside basement door opened and Mr. Jacobi emerged carrying the bicycle. This was the first view of him in the movie. A breeze lifted the hair combed across his bald spot. He set the bicycle ceremoniously on the ground.

The film ended with Donald’s cautious first ride.

“Sad damn thing,” Crawford said, “but we already knew that.”

Graham started the birthday film over.

Crawford shook his head and began to read something from his briefcase with the aid of a penlight.

On the screen Mr. Jacobi brought the bicycle out of the basement. The basement door swung closed behind him. A padlock hung from it.

Graham froze the frame.

“There. That’s what he wanted the bolt cutter for, Jack—to cut that padlock and go in through the basement. Why didn’t he go in that way?”

Crawford clicked off his penlight and looked over his glasses at the screen. “What’s that?”

“I know he had a bolt cutter—he used it to trim that branch out of his way when he was watching from the woods. Why didn’t he use it and go in through the basement door?”

“He couldn’t.” With a small crocodile smile, Crawford waited. He loved to catch people in assumptions.

“Did he try? Did he mark it up? I never even saw that door—Geehan had put in a steel one with deadbolts by the time I got there.”

Crawford opened his jaws. “You assume Geehan put it in. Geehan didn’t put it in. The steel door was there when they were killed. Jacobi must have put it in—he was a Detroit guy, he’d favor deadbolts.”

“When did Jacobi put it in?”

“I don’t know. Obviously it was after the kid’s birthday—when was that? It’ll be in the autopsy if you’ve got it here.”

“His birthday was April 14, a Monday,” Graham said, staring at the screen, his chin in his hand. “I want to know when Jacobi changed the door.”

Crawford’s scalp wrinkled. It smoothed out again as he saw the point. “You think the Tooth Fairy cased the Jacobi house while the old door with the padlock was still there,” he said.

“He brought a bolt cutter, didn’t he? How do you break in someplace with a bolt cutter?” Graham said. “You cut padlocks, bars, or chain. Jacobi didn’t have any bars or chained gates, did he?”

“No.”

“Then he went there expecting a padlock. A bolt cutter’s fairly heavy and it’s long. He was moving in daylight, and from where he parked he had to hike a long way to the Jacobi house. For all he knew, he might be coming back in one hell of a hurry if something went wrong. He wouldn’t have carried a bolt cutter unless he knew he’d need it. He was expecting a padlock.”

“You figure he cased the place before Jacobi changed the door. Then he shows up to kill them, waits in the woods—”

“You can’t see this side of the house from the woods.”

Crawford nodded. “He waits in the woods. They go to bed and he moves in with his bolt cutter and finds the new door with the deadbolts.”

“Say he finds the new door. He had it all worked out, and now this,” Graham said, throwing up his hands. “He’s really pissed off, frustrated, he’s hot to get in there. So he does a fast, loud pry job on the patio door. It was messy the way he went in—he woke Jacobi up and had to blow him away on the stairs. That’s not like the Dragon. He’s not messy that way. He’s careful and he leaves nothing behind. He did a neat job at the Leedses’ going in.”

“Okay, all right,” Crawford said. “If we find out when Jacobi changed his door, maybe we’ll establish the interval between when he cased it and when he killed them. The minimum time that elapsed, anyway. That seems like a useful thing to know. Maybe it’ll match some interval the Birmingham convention and visitors bureau could show us. We can check car rentals again. This time we’ll do vans too. I’ll have a word with the Birmingham field office.”

Crawford’s word must have been emphatic: In forty minutes flat a Birmingham FBI agent, with Realtor Geehan in tow, was shouting to a carpenter working in the rafters of a new house. The carpenter’s information was relayed in a radio patch to Chicago.

“Last week in April,” Crawford said, putting down the telephone. “That’s when they put in the new door. My God, that’s two months before the Jacobis were hit. Why would he case it two months in advance?”