Hannibal - Thomas Harris [155]
He approached her with a small flashlight. Dr Lecter smelled like fresh broadcloth.
She forced herself to keep her eyes open as he examined her pupils, then he stepped away again.
“Thank you. There's a very comfortable bathroom, just in there. Want to try your feet? Slippers are beside your bed, I'm afraid I had to borrow your boots.”
She was awake and not awake. The bathroom was indeed comfortable and furnished with every amenity. In the following days she enjoyed long baths there, but she did not bother with her reflection in the mirror, so far was she from herself.
Hannibal
Chapter 92
DAYS OF talk, sometimes hearing herself and wondering who was speaking with such intimate knowledge of her thoughts. Days of sleep and strong broth and omelettes.
And one day Dr Lecter said, “Clarice, you must be tired of your robes and pajamas. There are some things in the closet you might like - only if you want to wear them.” And in the same tone, “I put your personal things, your purse and your gun and your wallet, in the top drawer of the chest, if you want any.of that.”
“Thank you, Dr Lecter.”
In the closet were a variety of clothes, dresses, pants suits, a shimmery long gown with a beaded top. There were cashmere pants and pullovers that appealed to her. She chose tan cashmere, and moccasins.
In the drawer was her belt and Yaqui slide, empty of the lost .45, but her ankle holster was there beside her purse, and in it was the cutdown .45 automatic. The clip was full of fat cartridges, nothing in the chamber, the way she wore it on her leg. And her boot knife was there, in its scabbard. Her car keys were in her purse.
Starling was herself and not herself. When she wondered about events it was as though she saw them from the side, saw herself from a distance.
She was happy to see her car in the garage when Dr Lecter took her out to it. She looked at the wipers and decided to replace them.
“Clarice, how do you think Mason's men followed us to the grocery store?”
She looked up at the garage ceiling for a moment, thinking.
It took her less than two minutes to find the antenna running crosswise between the backseat and the package shelf, and she followed the antenna wire to the hidden beacon.
She turned it off and carried it into the house by the antenna as she might carry a rat by the tail.
“Very nice,” she said. “Very new. Decent installation too. I'm sure it's got Mr. Krendler's prints on it. May I have a plastic bag?”
“Could they search for it with aircraft?”
“It's off now. They couldn't search with aircraft unless Krendler admitted he used it. You know he didn't do that. Mason could sweep with his helicopter.”
“Mason is dead.”
“Ummmm,” Starling said. “Would you play for me?”
Hannibal
Chapter 93
PAUL KRENDLER swung between tedium and rising fear in the first days after the murders. He arranged for direct reports from the FBI local field office in Maryland.
He felt reasonably safe from any audit of Mason's books because the passage of money from Mason to his own numbered account had a fairly foolproof cutout in the Cayman Islands. But with Mason gone, he had big plans and no patron. Margot Verger knew about his money, and she knew he had compromised the security of the FBI files on Lecter. Margot had to keep her mouth shut.
The monitor for the auto beacon worried him. He had taken it from the Engineering building at Quantico without signing it out, but he was on the entry log at Engineering for that day.
Dr Doemling and the big nurse, Barney, had seen him at Muskrat, but only in a.legitimate role, talking with Mason Verger about how to catch Hannibal Lecter.
General relief came to everyone on the fourth afternoon after the murders when Margot Verger was able to play for the sheriff's investigators a newly taped message on her answering machine.
The policemen stood rapt in the bedroom, staring at the bed she shared