The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter 2)

They each took a swig out of their Cokes and poured in a shot of sour mash. Then they stuck their thumbs in the necks of the bottles, shook them, and shot the foam in their mouths.

“Ahhh,” Starling said.

“Don’t spill that in here,” Jeff said.

“Don’t worry, Jeff,” Mapp said. Quietly to Starling, “You should have seen my man Jeff waiting for me outside the liquor store. He looked like he was passing peach seeds.” When Mapp saw the whiskey start to work a little, when Starling sank a little deeper in her chair, Mapp said, “How you doing, Starling?”

“Ardelia, I’m damned if I know.”

“You don’t have to go back, do you?”

“Maybe for one day next week, but I hope not. The U.S. Attorney came over from Columbus to talk to the Belvedere cops. I did depositions out the wazoo.”

“Couple of good things,” Mapp said. “Senator Martin’s been on the phone all evening from Bethesda—you knew they took Catherine to Bethesda? Well, she’s okay. He didn’t mess her up in any physical way. Emotional damage, they don’t know, they have to watch. Don’t worry about school. Crawford and Brigham both called. The hearing’s canceled. Krendler asked for his memo back. These people have got a heart like a greasy BB, Starling—you get no slack. You don’t have to take the Search-and-Seizure exam at 0800 tomorrow, but you take it Monday, and the PE test right after. We’ll jam over the weekend.”

They finished the half-pint just north of Quantico and dumped the evidence in a barrel at a roadside park.

“That Pilcher, Doctor Pilcher at the Smithsonian, called three times. Made me promise to tell you he called.”

“He’s not a doctor.”

“You think you might do something about him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

“He sounds like he’s pretty funny. I’ve about decided funny’s the best thing in men, I’m talking about aside from money and your basic manageability.”

“Yeah, and manners too, you can’t leave that out.”

“Right. Give me a son of a bitch with some manners every time.”

Starling went like a zombie from the shower to the bed.

Mapp kept her reading light on for a while, until Starling’s breathing was regular. Starling jerked in her sleep, a muscle in her cheek twitched, and once her eyes opened wide.

Mapp woke sometime before daylight, the room feeling empty. Mapp turned on her light. Starling was not in her bed. Both of their laundry bags were missing, so Mapp knew where to look.

She found Starling in the warm laundry room, dozing against the slow rump-rump of a washing machine in the smell of bleach and soap and fabric softener. Starling had the psychology background—Mapp’s was law—yet it was Mapp who knew that the washing machine’s rhythm was like a great heartbeat and the rush of its waters was what the unborn hear—our last memory of peace.

CHAPTER 58

Jack Crawford woke early on the sofa in his study and heard the snoring of his in-laws in his house. In the free moment before the weight of the day came on him, he remembered not Bella’s death, but the last thing she’d said to him, her eyes clear and calm: “What’s going on in the yard?”

He took Bella’s grain scoop and, in his bathrobe, went out and fed the birds as he had promised to do. Leaving a note for his sleeping in-laws, he eased out of the house before sunrise. Crawford had always gotten along with Bella’s relatives, more or less, and it helped to have the noise in the house, but he was glad to get away to Quantico.

He was going through the overnight telex traffic and watching the early news in his office when Starling pressed her nose to the glass of the door. He dumped some reports out of a chair for her and they watched the news together without saying anything. Here it came.

The outside of Jame Gumb’s old building in Belvedere with its empty storefront and soaped windows covered with heavy gates. Starling hardly recognized it.

“Dungeon of Horrors,” the news reader called it.

Harsh, jostled pictures of the well and the basement, still cameras held up before the television camera, and angry firemen waving the photographers back. Moths crazed by the television lights, flying into the lights, a moth on the floor on its back, wings beating down to a final tremor.

Catherine Martin refusing a stretcher and walking to the ambulance with a policeman’s coat around her, the dog sticking its face out between the lapels.

A side view of Starling walking fast to a car, her head down, hands in the pockets of her coat.

The film was edited to exclude