Hannibal - Thomas Harris [35]
Starling had to chew on that. “What'll you do with the bird?” she asked.
“Pluck it and eat it,” Barney said. “Come on to the house and I'll give you the X ray and the books.”.Carrying the long package back toward the hospital and her car, Starling heard the surviving mourning dove call once from the trees.
Hannibal
Chapter 13
THANKS To the consideration of one madman and the obsession of another, Starling now had for the moment what she always wanted, an office in the storied subterranean corridor at Behavioral Science. It was bitter to get the office this way.
Starling never expected to go straight to the elite Behavioral Science section when she graduated from the FBI Academy, but she had believed that she could earn a place there. She knew she would spend several years in field offices first.
Starling was good at the job, but not good at office politics, and it took her years to see that she would never go to Behavioral Science, despite the wishes of its chief, Jack Crawford.
A major reason was invisible to her until, like an astronomer locating a black hole, she found Deputy Assistant Inspector General Paul Krendler by his influence on the bodies around him. He had never forgiven her for finding the serial killer Jame Gumb ahead of him, and he could not bear the press attention it brought her.
Once Krendler called her at home on a rainy winter night. She answered the telephone in a robe and bunny slippers with her hair up in a towel. She would always remember the date exactly because it was the first week of Desert Storm. Starling was a tech agent then and she had just returned from New York, where she had replaced the radio in the Iraqi U.N. Mission's limousine. The new radio was just like the old one, except it broadcast conversations in the car to a Defense Department satellite overhead. It had been a dicey maneuver in a private garage and she was still edgy.
For a wild second, she thought Krendler had called to say she'd done a good job.
She remembered the rain against the windows and Krendler's voice on the phone, speech a little slurred, bar noises in the background.
He asked her out. He said he could come by in half an hour. He was married.
“I think not, Mr. Krendler,” she said and pushed the record button on her answering machine, it making the requisite legal beep, and the line went dead.
Now, years later in the office she had wanted to earn, Starling penciled her name on a piece of scrap paper and Scotchtaped it to the door. That wasn't funny and she tore it off again and threw it in the trash.
There was one piece of mail in her intray. It was a questionnaire from The Guinness Book of World Records, which prepared to list her as having killed more criminals than any other female law enforcement officer in United States history. The term criminals was being used advisedly, the publisher explained, as all of the deceased had multiple felony convictions and three had outstanding warrants. The questionnaire went into the trash along with her name.
She was in her second hour of pecking away at the computer workstation, blowing stray strands of hair out of her face, when Crawford knocked on the.door and stuck his head inside.
“Brian called from the lab, Starling. Mason's Xray and the one you got from Barney are a match. It's Lector's arm. They'll digitize the images and compare them, but he says there's no question. We'll post everything to the secure Lector VICAP folder.”
“What about Mason Verger?”
“We tell him the truth,” Crawford said. “You and I both know he won't share, Starling, unless he gets something he can't move on himself. But if we try to take over his lead in Brazil at this point, it'll evaporate.”
“You told me to leave it alone and I did.”
“You were doing something in here.”
“Mason's X ray came by DHL Express. DHL took the bar code and label information and pinpointed the pickup location. It's in the Hotel Ibarra in Rio.”
Starling raised her hand to forestall