Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [120]
The desk officer stood at the bulletin board, thirty feet from the reception desk.
The armed guard was closer to the door. His holster creaked as he bent to rub a spot on the toe of his shoe.
If they fight, drop him first. Dolarhyde put the gun under his belt and buttoned his coat over it. He walked across the lobby, unclipping his pass.
The desk officer turned when he heard the footsteps.
“Thank you,” Dolarhyde said. He held up his pass by the edges, then dropped it on the desk.
The guard nodded. “Would you put it through the slot there, please?”
The reception desk telephone rang.
The pass was hard to pick up off the glass top. The telephone rang again. Hurry.
Dolarhyde got hold of the pass, dropped it through the slot. He picked up his guitar case from the pile of knapsacks.
The guard was coming to the telephone.
Out the door now, walking fast for the botanical gardens, he was ready to turn and fire if he heard pursuit.
Inside the gardens and to the left, Dolarhyde ducked into a space between a small shed and a hedge. He opened the guitar case and dumped out a tennis racket, a tennis ball, a towel, a folded grocery sack and a big bunch of leafy celery.
Buttons flew as he tore off his coat and shirt in one move and stepped out of his trousers. Underneath he wore a Brooklyn College Tshirt and warmup pants. He stuffed his books and clothing into the grocery bag, then the weapons. The celery stuck out the top. He wiped the handle and clasps of the case and shoved it under the hedge.
Cutting across the gardens now toward Prospect Park, the towel around his neck, he came out onto Empire Boulevard. Joggers were ahead of him. As he followed the joggers into the park, the first police cruisers screamed past. None of the joggers paid any attention to them. Neither did Dolarhyde.
He alternated jogging and walking, carrying his grocery bag and racket and bouncing his tennis ball, a man cooing off from a hard workout who had stopped by the store on the way home.
He made himself slow down; he shouldn't run on a full stomach. He could choose his pace now.
He could choose anything.
? HYPERLINK “” \l “CONTENTS” ??
Red Dragon
CHAPTER 42
Crawford sat in the back row of the jury box eating Redskin peanuts while Graham closed the courtroom blinds.
“You'll have the profile for me later this afternoon, I take it,” Crawford said. “You told me Tuesday; this is Tuesday.”
“I'll finish it. I want to watch this first.”
Graham opened the express envelope from Byron Metcalf and dumped out the - two dusty rolls of homemovie film, each in plastic sandwich bag.
“Is Metcalf pressing charges against Niles Jacobi?”
“Not for theft - he'll probably inherit anyway - he and Jacobi's brother,” Graham said. “On the hash, I don't know. Birmingham DA's inclined to break his chops.”
“Good,” Crawford said.
The movie screen swung down from the courtroom ceiling to face the jury box, an arrangement which made it easy to show jurors filmed evidence.
Graham threaded the projector.
“On checking the newsstands where the Tooth Fairy could have gotten a Tattler so fast - I've had reports back from Cincinnati, Detroit, and a bunch from Chicago,” Crawford said. “Various weirdos to run down.”
Graham started the film. It was a fishing movie.
The Jacobi children hunkered on the bank of a pond with cane poles and bobbers.
Graham tried not to think of them in their small boxes in the ground. He tried to think of them just fishing.
The girl's cork bobbed and disappeared. She had a bite.
Crawford crackled his peanut sack. “Indianapolis is dragging ass on questioning newsies and checking the Servco Supreme stations,” he said.
“Do you want to watch this or what?” Graham said.
Crawford was silent until the end of the twominute film. “Terrific, she caught a perch,” he said. “Now the profile-”
“Jack, you were in Birmingham right after it happened. I didn't get there for a month. You saw the house while it was still their house - I didn't. It was stripped and remodeled when I got there. Now, for Christ's sake let me look at these