Hannibal - Thomas Harris [10]
Starling didn't strike back, but pinned the older woman against the maternity ward window in a wrist lock until she stopped struggling, her face distorted against the foam and spitsmeared glass. Blood rail down Starling's neck and the pain made her dizzy. She had her ear restitched in the emergency room and declined to file charges. An emergency room aid tipped the Tattler and got three hundred dollars.
She had to go out twice more to make John Brigham's final arrangements and to attend his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Brigham's relatives were few and distant and in his written final requests, he named Starling to take care of him. The extent of his facial injuries required a closed casket, but she had seen to his appearance as well as she could. She laid him out in his perfect Marine dress blues, with his Silver Star and ribbons for his other decorations.
After the ceremony, Brigham's commanding officer delivered to Starling a box containing John Brigham's personal weapons, his badges, and some items from his evercluttered desk, including his silly weather bird that drank from a glass.
In five days Starling faced a hearing that could ruin her. Except for one message from Jack Crawford, her work phone had been silent, and there was no Brigham to talk to anymore.
She called her representative in the FBI Agent's Association. His advice was to not wear dangly earrings or opentoed shoes to the hearing.
Every day television and the newspapers seized the story of Evelda Drumgo's death and shook it like a rat.
Here in the absolute order of Mapp's house, Starling tried to think..The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.
A noise was intruding.
Starling tried to remember her exact words in the undercover van. Had she said more than was necessary? A noise was intruding.
Brigham told her to brief the others on Evelda. Did she express some hostility, say some slur -A
noise was intruding. She came to herself and realized she was hearing her own doorbell next door. A reporter probably. She was also expecting a civil subpoena. She moved Mapp's front curtain and peeked out to see the mailman returning to his truck.
She opened Mapp's front door and caught him, turning her back to the press car across the, street with the telephoto lens as she signed for the express mail. The envelope was mauve, with silky threads in the fine linen paper. Distracted as she was, it reminded her of something. Back inside, out of the glare, she looked at the address. A fine copperplate hand.
Above the constant droning note of dread in Starling's mind, a warning went off. She felt the skin on her belly quiver as though she had dripped something cold down her front.
Starling took the envelope by the corners and carried it into the kitchen. From her purse, she took the ever present white evidencehandling gloves. She pressed the envelope on the hard surface of the kitchen tab and felt it carefully all over. Though the paper stock was heavy, she would have detected the lump of a watch battery ready to fire a sheet of C-4. She knew she should take it to a fluoroscope. If she opened it she might get in trouble. Trouble. Right. Balls.
She slit the envelope with a kitchen knife and took out the single, silky sheet of paper. She knew at once, before she glanced at the signature, who had writ- ` ten to her.
Dear Clarice,
I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming. My own never bothered me, except for the inconvenience of being incarcerated, but you may lack perspective.
In our discussions down in the dungeon, it was apparent to me that your father, the dead night watchman, figures large in your value system. I think your success in putting an end to Jame Gumb's career as a couturier pleased you most because you could imagine your father doing it.
Now you are in bad odor with the FBI. Have you always imagined your father ahead of you there,