The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter 2)

He liked his pistol, and well he should, because it was a very handsome piece, a stainless steel Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. All Python actions are tuned at the Colt custom shop, and this one was a pleasure to feel. He cocked it now and squeezed it off, catching the hammer with his thumb. He loaded the Python and put it on the workroom counter.

Mr. Gumb wanted very much to offer this one a shampoo, because he wanted to watch it comb out the hair. He could learn much for his own grooming about how the hair lay on the head. But this one was tall and probably strong. This one was too rare to risk having to waste the whole thing with gunshot wounds.

No, he’d get his hoisting tackle from the bathroom, offer her a bath, and when she had put herself securely in the hoisting sling he’d bring her halfway up the shaft of the oubliette and shoot her several times low in the spine. When she lost consciousness he could do the rest with chloroform.

That’s it. He’d go upstairs now and get out of his clothes. He’d wake up Precious and watch his video with her and then go to work, naked in the warm basement, naked as the day he was born.

He felt almost giddy going up the stairs. Quickly out of his clothes and into his robe. He plugged in his videocassette.

“Precious, come on Precious. Busybusy day. Come on, Sweetheart.” He’d have to shut her up here in the upstairs bedroom while he got through with the noisy part in the basement—she hated the noise and got terribly upset. To keep her occupied, he’d gotten her a whole box of Chew-eez while he was out shopping.

“Precious.” When she didn’t come, he called in the hall, “Precious!” and then in the kitchen, and in the basement, “Precious!” When he called at the door of the oubliette room, he got an answer:

“She’s down here you son of a bitch,” Catherine Martin said.

Mr. Gumb sickened all over in a plunge of fear for Precious. Then rage tightened him again and, fists against the sides of his head, he pressed his forehead into the doorframe and tried to get hold of himself. One sound between a retch and a groan escaped him and the little dog answered with a yip.

He went to the workroom and got his pistol.

The string to the sanitation bucket was broken. He still wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Last time the string was broken, he’d assumed she’d broken it in an absurd attempt to climb. They had tried to climb it before—they had done every fool thing imaginable.

He leaned over the opening, his voice carefully controlled.

“Precious, are you all right? Answer me.”

Catherine pinched the dog’s plump behind. It yipped and paid her back with a nip on the arm.

“How’s that?” Catherine said.

It seemed very unnatural to Mr. Gumb to speak to Catherine in this way, but he overcame his distaste.

“I’ll lower a basket. You’ll put her in it.”

“You’ll lower a telephone or I’ll have to break her neck. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt this little dog. Just give me the telephone.”

Mr. Gumb brought the pistol up. Catherine saw the muzzle extending past the light. She crouched, holding the dog above her, weaving it between her and the gun. She heard him cock the pistol.

“You shoot motherfucker you better kill me quick or I’ll break her fucking neck. I swear to God.”

She put the dog under her arm, put her hand around its muzzle, raised its head. “Back off, you son of a bitch.” The little dog whined. The gun withdrew.

Catherine brushed the hair back from her wet forehead with her free hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said. “Just lower me a phone. I want a live phone. You can go away, I don’t care about you, I never saw you. I’ll take good care of Precious.”

“No.”

“I’ll see she has everything. Think about her welfare, not just yourself. You shoot in here, she’ll be deaf whatever happens. All I want’s a live telephone. Get a long extension, get five or six and clip them together—they come with the connections on the ends—and lower it down here. I’d air-freight you the dog anywhere. My family has dogs. My mother loves dogs. You can run, I don’t care what you do.”

“You won’t get any more water, you’ve had your last water.”

“She won’t get any either, and I won’t give her any from my water bottle. I’m sorry to tell you, I think her leg’s broken.” This was a lie—the little dog, along with the baited bucket, had fallen onto Catherine and it was Catherine who suffered a scratched cheek from the dog’s scrabbling claws. She couldn’t put it down or he’d see it didn’t limp. “She’s in pain. Her leg’s all crooked and she’s trying to lick it. It just makes me sick,” Catherine lied. “I’ve got to get her to a vet.”

Mr. Gumb’s groan of rage and anguish made the little dog cry. “You think she’s in pain,” Mr. Gumb said. “You don’t know what pain is. You hurt her and I’ll scald you.”

When she heard him pounding up the stairs Catherine Martin sat down, shaken by gross jerks in her arms and legs. She couldn’t hold the dog, she couldn’t hold her water, she couldn’t hold anything.

When the little dog climbed into her lap she hugged it, grateful for the warmth.

CHAPTER 50