Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [119]
She put the case on the table and unclasped it. A noise at the double doors. “Excuse me, I have to get the door for Julio.” She refastened the case and carried it with her to the glass doors. A man with a wheeled dolly waited outside. She held the doors open while he rolled it in.
“Over here okay?”
“Yes, thank you, Julio.”
The man went out.
Here came Miss Harper with the solander box.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Crane. Julio's dusting today and getting the tarnish off some frames.” She opened the case and took out a white cardboard folder. “You understand that you aren't allowed to touch it. I'll display it for you - that's the rule. Okay?”
Dolarbyde nodded. He couldn't speak.
She opened the folder and removed the covering plastic sheet and mat.
There it was. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun - the ManDragon rampant over the prostrate pleading woman caught in a coil of his tail.
It was small all right, but it was powerful. Stunning. The best reproductions didn't do justice to the details and the colors.
Dolarhyde saw it clear, saw it all in an instant - Blake's hand - writing on the borders, two brown spots at the right edge of the paper. It seized him hard. It was too much . . . the colors were so much stronger.
Look at the woman wrapped in the Dragon's tail. Look.
He saw that her hair was the exact color of Reba McClane's. He saw that he was twenty feet from the door. He held in voices.
I hope I didn't shock you, said Reba McClane.
“It appears that he used chalk as well as watercolor,” Paula Harper was saying. She stood at an angle so that she could see what he was doing. Her eyes never left the painting.
Dolarhyde put his hand inside his shirt.
Somewhere a telephone was ringing. The typing stopped. A woman stuck her head out of the far cubicle.
“Paula, telephone for you. It's your mother.”
Miss Harper did not turn her head. Her eyes never left Dolarhyde or the painting. “Would you take a message?” she said. “Tell her I'll call her back.”
The woman disappeared into the office. In a moment the typing started again.
Dolarhyde couldn't hold it anymore. Play for it all, right now.
But the Dragon moved first. “I'VE NEVER SEEN-”
“What?” Miss Harper's eyes were wide.
“- a rat that big!” Dolarhyde said, pointing. “Climbing that frame!”
Miss Harper was turning. “Where?”
The blackjack slid out of his shirt. With his wrist more than his arm, he tapped the back of her skull. She sagged as Dolarhyde grabbed a handful of her blouse and clapped the chloroform rag over her face. She made a high sound once, not overloud, and went limp.
He eased her to the floor between the table and the racks of paintings, pulled the folder with the watercolor to the floor, and squatted over her. Rustling, wadding, hoarse breathing and a telephone ringing.
The woman came out of the far office.
“Paula?” She looked around the room. “It's your mother,” she called. “She needs to talk to you now.”
She walked behind the table. “I'll take care of the visitor if you . . .” She saw them then. Paula Harper on the floor, her hair across her face, and squatting over her, his pistol in his hand, Dolarhyde stuffing the last bite of the watercolor in his mouth. Rising, chewing, running. Toward her.
She ran for her office, slammed the flimsy door, grabbed at the phone and knocked it to the floor, scrambled for it on her hands and knees and tried to dial on the busy line as her door caved in. The lighted dial burst in bright colors at the impact behind her ear. The receiver fell quacking to the floor.
Dolarhyde in the staff elevator watched the indicator lights blink down, his gun held flat across his stomach, covered by his books.
First floor.
Out into the deserted galleries. He walked fast, his running shoes whispering on the terrazzo. A wrong turn and he was passing the whale masks, the great mask of Sisuit, losing seconds, running now into the presence of the Haida high totems and lost. He ran to the totems, looked left, saw the primitive edged weapons and knew where he was.
He peered around the corner