Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [17]
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He had in his pocket a reel of Super Eight movie film belonging to Charles Leeds. Three weeks before his death, Leeds had left the film with a druggist who sent it away for processing. He never picked it up. Police found the receipt in Leeds's wallet and got the film from the druggist. Detectives viewed the home movie along with family snapshots developed at the same time and found nothing of interest.
Graham wanted to see the Leedses alive. At the police station, the detectives had offered Graham their projector. He wanted to watch the movie at the house. Reluctantly they let him check it out of the property room.
Graham found the screen and projector in the den closet, set them up, and sat down in Charles Leeds's big leather armchair to watch. He felt something tacky on the chair arm under his palm - a child's sticky fingerprints fuzzed with lint. Graham's hand smelled like candy.
It was a pleasant little silent home movie, more imaginative than most. It opened with a dog, a gray Scotty, asleep on the den rug. The dog was disturbed momentarily by the moviemaking and raised his head to look at the camera. Then he went to sleep again. A jumpy cut to the dog still asleep. Then the Scotty's ears perked up. He rose and barked, and the camera followed him into the kitchen as he ran to the door and stood expectantly, shivering and wagging his stumpy tail.
Graham bit his lower lip and waited too. On the screen, the door opened and Mrs. Leeds came in carrying groceries. She blinked and laughed in surprise and touched her tousled hair with her free hand. Her lips moved as she walked out of the picture, and the children came in behind her carrying smaller sacks. The girl was six, the boys eight and ten.
The younger boy, apparently a veteran of home movies, pointed to his ears and wiggled them. The camera was positioned fairly high. Leeds was seventyfive inches tall, according to the coroner's report.
Graham believed that this part of the movie must have been made in the early spring. The children wore windbreakers and Mrs. Leeds appeared pale. At the morgue she had a good tan and bathingsuit marks.
Brief scenes followed of the boys playing PingPong in the base?ment and the girl, Susan, wrapping a present in her room, tongue curled over her upper lip in concentration and a wisp of hair down over her forehead. She brushed her hair back with her plump hand, as her mother had done in the kitchen.
A subsequent scene showed Susan in a bubble bath, crouched like a small frog. She wore a large shower cap. The camera angle was lower and the focus uncertain, clearly the work of a brother. The scene ended with her shouting soundlessly at the camera and cover?ing her sixyearold chest as her shower cap slipped down over her eyes.
Not to be outdone, Leeds had surprised Mrs. Leeds in the shower. The shower curtain bumped and bulged as the curtain does before a gradeschool theatrical. Mrs. Leeds's arm appeared around the cur?tain. In her hand was a large bath sponge. The scene closed with the lens obscured in soapsuds.
The film ended with a shot of Norman Vincent Peale speaking on television and a pan to Charles Leeds snoring in the chair where Graham now sat.
Graham stared at the blank square of light on the screen. He liked the Leedses. He was sorry that he had been to the morgue. He thought the madman who visited them might have liked them too. But the madman would like them better the way they were now.
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Graham's head felt stuffed and stupid. He swam in the pool at his hotel until he was rubberlegged, and came out of the water thinking of two things at once - a Tanqueray martini and the taste of Molly's mouth.
He made the martini himself in a plastic glass and telephoned Molly.
“Hello, hotshot.”
“Hey, baby! Where are you?”
“In this damned hotel in Atlanta.”
“Doing some good?”
“None you'd notice. I'm lonesome.”
“Me too.”
“Horny.”
“Me too.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, I had a runin with Mrs. Holper today. She wanted to re?turn a dress with a huge big whiskey stain on the seat. I mean, obviously