Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [37]
Dolarhyde read it in his office with the door closed.
Freddy Lounds had two bylines in the same doublepage center spread. The main story was a breathless reconstruction of the Jacobi and Leeds murders. Since the police had not divulged many of the specifics, Lounds consulted his imagination for lurid details. Dolarhyde found them banal.
The sidebar was more interesting:
Insane Fiend Consulted in Mass Murders
by Cop He Tried to Kill
by
Freddy Lounds
CHESAPEAKE,MD. - Federal manhunters, stymied in their search for the “Tooth Fairy,” psychopathic slayer of entire families in Birmingham and Atlanta, have turned to the most savage killer in captivity for help.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whose unspeakable practices were reported in these pages three years ago, was consulted this week in his maximumsecurityasylum cell by ace investigator William (Will) Graham.
Graham suffered a nearfatal slashing at Lecter's hands when he unmasked the mass murderer.
He was brought back from early retirement to spearhead the hunt for the “Tooth Fairy.”
What went on in this bizarre meeting of two mortal enemies? What was Graham after?
“It takes one to catch one,” a high federal official told this reporter. He was referring to Lecter, known as “Hannibal the Cannibal,” who is both a psychiatrist and a mass murderer.
OR WAS HE REFERRING TO GRAHAM???
The Tattler has learned that Graham, former instructor in forensics at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., was once confined to a mental institution for a period of four weeks.
Federal officials refused to say why they placed a man with a history of mental instability at the forefront of a desperate manhunt.
The nature of Graham's mental problem was not revealed, but one former psychiatric worker called it “deep depression.”
Garmon Evans, a paraprofessional formerly employed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, said Graham was admitted to the psychiatric wing soon after he killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the “Minnesota Shrike.” Graham shot Hobbs to death in 1975, ending Hobbs's eightmonth reign of terror in Minneapolis.
Evans said Graham was withdrawn and refused to eat or speak during the first weeks of his stay.
Graham has never been an FBI agent. Veteran observers attribute this to the Bureau's strict screening procedures, designed to detect instability.
Federal sources would reveal only that Graham originally worked in the FBI crime laboratory and was assigned teaching duties at the FBI Academy after outstanding work both in the laboratory and in the field, where he served as a “special investigator.”
The Tattler learned that before his federal service, Graham was in the homicide division of the New Orleans police department, a post he left to attend graduate school in forensics at George Washington University.
One New Orleans officer who served with Graham commented, "Well, you can call him retired, but the feds like to know be's around. It's like having a king snake under the house. They may not see him much, but it's nice to know he's there to eat the moccasins.
Dr. Lecter is confined for the rest of his life. If he is ever declared sane, he will have to stand trial on nine counts of firstdegree murder.
Lecter's attorney says the mass murderer spends his time writing useful articles for the scientific journals and has an “ongoing dialogue” by mall with some of the most respected figures in psychiatry.
Dolarhyde stopped reading and looked at the pictures. There were two of them above the sidebar. One showed Lecter pinned against the side of a state trooper's car. The other was the picture of Will Graham taken by Freddy Lounds outside the Chesapeake State Hos?pital. A small photograph of Lounds ran beside each of his bylines.
Dolarhyde looked at the pictures for a long time. He ran the tip of his forefinger over them slowly, back and forth, his touch exquisitely sensitive to the rough newsprint. Ink left a smudge on his fingertip. He wet the smudge with his tongue and wiped it off on a Kleenex. Then he cut out the sidebar and put it in his pocket.
# # #
On his way home from the plant, Dolarhyde