Hannibal - Thomas Harris [124]
“Did you know the deceased?” Dr Lecter asked.
“We just bought this mortuary and took over this cemetery as an addition to our group in 1989,” Mr. Greenlea said. “I live locally now, but our firm's headquarters is in St Louis. Do you want to try to preserve the clothing? Or I could let you have a suit, but I don't think”
“No,” Dr Lecter said. “Brush the bones, no clothing except the hat and the buckle and the boots, bag the small bones of the hands and feet, and bundle them in your best silk shroud with the skull and the long bones. You don't have to lay them out, just get them all. Will keeping the stone compensate you for reclosing?”
“Yes, if you'll just sign here, and I'll give you copies of those others,” Mr. Greenlea said, vastly pleased at the coffin he had sold. Most funeral directors coming for a body would have shipped the bones in a carton and sold the family a coffin of his own.
Dr Lecter's disinterment papers were in perfect accord with the Texas Health and Safety Code Sec. 711.004 as he knew they would be, having made them himself, downloading the requirements and facsimile forms from the Texas Association of Counties Quick Reference Law Library.
The two workmen, grateful for the power tailgate on Dr Letter's rental truck, rolled the new coffin into place and lashed it down on its dolly beside the only other item in the truck, a cardboard hanging wardrobe.
“That's such a good idea, carrying your own closet. Saves wrinkling your ceremonial attire in a suitcase, doesn't it?” Mr. Greenlea said.
In Dallas, the doctor removed from the wardrobe a viola case and put in it his silkbound bundle of bones, the hat fitting nicely into the lower section, the skull cushioned in it.
He shoved the coffin out the back at the Fish Trap Cemetery and turned in his rental at DallasFort Worth Airport, where he checked the viola case straight through to Philadelphia.
IV
NOTABLE OCCASIONS ON THE CALENDAR OF DREAD
Hannibal
Chapter 69
ON MONDAY, Clarice Starling had the weekend exotic purchases to check, and there were glitches in her system that required the help of her computer technician from Engineering. Even with severely pruned lists of two or three of the most special vintages from five vintners, the reduction to two sources for American foie gras, and five specialty grocers, the numbers of purchases were formidable. Callins from individual liquor stores using the telephone.number on the bulletin had to be entered by hand.
Based on the identification of Dr Lecter in the murder of the deer hunter in Virginia, Starling cut the list to East Coast purchases except for Sonoma foie gras. Fauchon in Paris refused to cooperate. Starling could make no sense of what Vera dal 1926 in Florence said on the telephone, and faxed the Questura for help in case Dr Lecter ordered white truffles.
At the end of the workday on Monday, December 17, Starling had twelve possibilities to follow up. They were combinations of purchases on credit cards. One man had bought a case of Petrus and a supercharged Jaguar, both on the same American Express.
Another placed an order for a case of BatardMontrachet and a case of green Gironde oysters.
Starling passed each possibility along to the local line bureau for followup.
Starling and Eric Pickford worked separate but overlapping shifts in order to have the office manned during store retail hours.
It was Pickford's fourth day on the job and he spent part of it programming his autodial telephone. He did not label the buttons.
When he went out for coffee, Starling pushed the top button on his telephone, Paul Krendler himself answered.
She hung up and sat in silence. It was time to go home. Swiveling her chair slowly around and around, she regarded all the objects in Hannibal's House. The X rays, the books, the table set for one. Then she pushed out through the curtains.
Crawford's office was open and empty. The sweater his late wife knitted for him hung on a coat tree in the corner. Starling put her hand out to the sweater, did not quite touch it, slung her coat