Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [101]
Dolarhyde had reached for his remote control when he saw on the screen someone he had talked with only hours ago on the telephone: Zoo Director Dr. Frank Warfield, who had been so pleased to have the film Dolarhyde offered.
Dr. Warfield and a dentist were working on a tiger with a broken tooth. Dolarhyde wanted to see the tiger, but the reporter was in the way. Finally the newsman moved.
Rocked back in his recliner, looking along his own powerful torso at the screen, Dolarhyde saw the great tiger stretched unconscious on a heavy work table.
Today they were preparing the tooth. In a few days they would cap it, the oaf reported.
Dolarhyde watched them calmly working between the jaws of the tiger’s terrible striped face.
“May I touch your face?” said Miss Reba McClane.
He wanted to tell Reba McClane something. He wished she had one inkling of what she had almost done. He wished she had one flash of his Glory. But she could not have that and live. She must live: he had been seen with her and she was too close to home.
He had tried to share with Lecter, and Lecter had betrayed him. Still, he would like to share. He would like to share with her a little, in a way she could survive.
? HYPERLINK “” \l “CONTENTS” ??
Red Dragon
CHAPTER 34
“I know it’s political, you know it’s political, but it’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway,” Crawford told Graham. They were walking down the State Street Mall toward the federal office building in the late afternoon. “Do what you’re doing, just write out the parallels and I’ll do the rest.”
The Chicago police department had asked the FBI’s Behavioral Science section for a detailed victim profile. Police officials said they would use it in planning disposition of extra patrols during the period of the full moon.
“Covering their ass is what they’re doing,” Crawford said, waving his bag of Tater Tots. “The victims have been affluent people, they need to stack the patrols in affluent neighborhoods. They know there’ll be a squawk about that – the ward bosses have been fighting over the extra manpower ever since Freddy lit off. If they patrol the uppermiddleclass neighborhoods and he hits the South Side, God help the city fathers. But if it happens, they can point at the damned feds. I can hear it now – ‘They told us to do it that way. That’s what they said do.”’
“I don’t think he’s any more likely to hit Chicago than anywhere else,” Graham said. “There’s no reason to think so. It’s a jerkoff. Why can’t Bloom do the profile? He’s a consultant to Behavioral Science.”
“They don’t want it from Bloom, they want it from us. It wouldn’t do them any good to blame Bloom. Besides, he’s still in the hospital. I’m instructed to do this. Somebody on the Hill has been on the phone with Justice. Above says do it. Will you just do it?”
“I’ll do it. It’s what I’m doing anyway.”
“That’s what I know,” Crawford said. “Just keep doing it.”
“I’d rather go back to Birmingham.”
“No,” Crawford said. “Stay with me on this.”
The last of Friday burned down the west.
Ten days to go.
? HYPERLINK “” \l “CONTENTS” ??
Red Dragon
CHAPTER 35
“Ready to tell me what kind of an ‘outing’ this is?” Reba McClane asked Dolarhyde on Saturday morning when they had ridden in silence for ten minutes. She hoped it was a picnic.
The van stopped. She heard Dolarhyde roll down his window.
“Dolarhyde,” he said. “Dr Warfield left my name.”
“Yes, sir. Would you put this under your wiper when you leave the vehicle?”
They moved forward slowly. Reba felt a gentle curve in the road. Strange and heavy odors on the wind. An elephant trumpeted.
“The zoo,” she said. “Terrific.” She would have preferred a picnic. What the hell, this was okay. “Who’s Dr. Warfield?”
“The zoo director.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“No. We did the zoo a favor with the film. They’re paying back.”
“How?”
“You get to touch the tiger.”
“Don’t surprise me too much!”
“Did you ever look at a tiger?”
She was glad he could ask the question. “No. I remember a puma when I was little. That’s all they