Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [3]
He nodded.
“Don't want to lose it either way,” she said.
“Nope. We won't, either.”
Darkness fell quickly and Jupiter appeared, low in the southwest.
They walked back to the house beside the rising gibbous moon. Far out past the tidal flats, bait fish leaped for their lives.
# # #
Crawford came back after dinner. He had taken off his coat and tie and rolled up his sleeves for the casual effect. Molly thought Crawford's thick pale forearms were repulsive. To her he looked like a damnably wise ape. She served him coffee under the porch fan and sat with him while Graham and Willy went out to feed dogs. She said nothing. Moths batted softly at the screens.
“He looks good, Molly,” Crawford said. “You both do - skinny and brown.”
“Whatever I say, you'll take him anyway, won't you?”
“Yeah. I have to. I have to do it. But I swear to God, Molly, I'll make it as easy on him as I can. He's changed. It's great you got married.”
“He's better and better. He doesn't dream so often now. He was really obsessed with the dogs for a while. Now he just takes care of them; he doesn't talk about them all the time. You're his friend, Jack. Why can't you leave him alone?”
“Because it's his bad luck to be the best. Because he doesn't think like other people. Somehow he never got in a rut.”
“He thinks you want him to look at evidence.”
“I do want him to look at evidence. There's nobody better with evidence. But he has the other thing too. Imagination, projection, whatever. He doesn't like that part of it.”
“You wouldn't like it either if you had it. Promise me something, Jack. Promise me you'll see to it he doesn't get too close. I think it would kill him to have to fight.”
“He won't have to fight. I can promise you that.”
When Graham finished with the dogs, Molly helped him pack.
? HYPERLINK “” \l “CONTENTS” ??
Red Dragon
CHAPTER 2
Will Graham drove slowly past the house where the Charles Leeds family had lived and died. The windows were dark. One yard light burned. He parked two blocks away and walked back through the warm night, carrying the Atlanta police detectives' report in a cardboard box.
Graham had insisted on coming alone. Anyone else in the house would distract him -that was the reason he gave Crawford. He had another, private reason: he was not sure how he would act. He didn't want a face aimed at him all the time.
He had been all right at the morgue.
The twostory brick home was set back from the street on a wooded lot. Graham stood under the trees for a long time looking at it. He tried to be still inside. In his mind a silver pendulum swung in darkness. He waited until the pendulum was still.
A few neighbors drove by, looking at the house quickly and look?ing away. A murder house is ugly to the neighbors, like the face of someone who betrayed them. Only outsiders and children stare.
The shades were up. Graham was glad. That meant no relatives had been inside. Relatives always lower the shades.
He walked around the side of the house, moving carefully, not us?ing his flashlight. He stopped twice to listen. The Atlanta police knew he was here, but the neighbors did not. They would be jumpy. They might shoot.
Looking in a rear window, he could see all the way through to the light in the front yard, past silhouettes of furniture. The scent of Cape jasmine was heavy in the air. A latticed porch ran across most of the back. On the porch door was the seal of the Atlanta police de?partment. Graham removed the seal and went in.
The door from the porch into the kitchen was patched with ply?wood where the police had taken out the glass. By flashlight he unlocked it with the key the police had given him. He wanted to turn on lights. He wanted to put on his shiny badge and make some official noises to justify himself to the silent house where five people had died. He did none of that. He went into the dark kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table.
Two pilot lights on the kitchen range glowed blue in the dark. He smelled furniture polish and apples.
The thermostat