Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [42]
“Yes.”
“At Chino.”
“You know about that.”
“I'm just trying to get it straight. What happened?”
“Well, there he was in Visitors, uptight and trying not to look around - so many people treat it like the zoo. I'd heard a lot about him from Mother, but he didn't look so bad. He was just a man standing there in a tacky sport coat.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I expected him either to jump right in my shit or to be real guilty, that's the way it goes mostly in Visitors. But he just asked me if I thought I could go to school. He said he'd go custody if I'd go to school. And try. 'You have to help yourself a little. Try and help yourself, and I'll see you get in school,' and like that.”
“How long before you got out?”
“Two weeks.”
“Niles, did you ever talk about your family while you were in Chino? To your cellmates or anybody?”
Niles Jacobi looked at Graham quickly. “Oh. Oh, I see. No. Not about my father. I hadn't thought about him in years, why would I talk about him?”
“How about here? Did you ever take any of your friends over to your parents' house?”
“Parent, not parents. She was not my mother.”
“Did you ever take anybody over there? School friends or . . .”
“Or rough trade, Officer Graham?”
“That's right.”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Not once.”
“Did he ever mention any kind of threat, was he ever disturbed about anything in the last month or two before it happened?”
“He was disturbed the last time I talked to him, but it was just my grades. I had a lot of cuts. He bought me two alarm clocks. There wasn't anything else that I know of.”
“Do you have any personal papers of his, correspondence, photographs, anything?”
“No.”
“You have a picture of the family. It's on the dresser in your room. Near the bong.”
“That's not my bong. I wouldn't put that filthy thing in my mouth.”
“I need the picture. I'll have it copied and send it back to you. What else do you have?”
Jacobi shook a cigarette out of his pack and patted his pockets for matches. “That's all. I can't imagine why they gave that to me. My father smiling at Mrs. Jacobi and all the little Munchkins. You can have it. He never looked like that to me.”
# # #
Graham needed to know the Jacobis. Their new acquaintances in Birmingham were little help.
Byron Metcalf gave him the run of the lockboxes. He read the thin stack of letters, mostly business, and poked through the jewelry and the silver.
For three hot days he worked in the warehouse where the Jacobis' household goods were stored. Metcalf helped him at night. Every crate on every pallet was opened and their examined. Police photographs helped Graham see where things had been in the house.
Most of the furnishings were new, bought with the insurance from the Detroit fire. The Jacobis hardly had time to leave their marks on their possessions.
One item, a bedside table with traces of fingerprint powder still on it, held Graham's attention. In the center of the tabletop was a blob of green wax.
For the second time he wondered if the killer liked candlelight.
The Birmingham forensics unit was good about sharing.
The blurred print of the end of a nose was the best Birmingham and Jimmy Price in Washington could do with the softdrink can from the tree.
The FBI laboratory's Firearms and Toolmarks section reported on the severed branch. The blades that clipped it were thick, with a shallow pitch: it had been done with a bolt cutter.
Document section had referred the mark cut in the bark to the Asian Studies department at Langley.
Graham sat on a packing case at the warehouse and read the long report. Asian Studies advised that the mark was a Chinese character which meant “You hit it” or “You hit it on the head” - an expres?sion sometimes used in gambling. It was considered a “positive” or “lucky” sign. The character also appeared on a MahJongg piece, the Asian scholars said. It marked the Red Dragon.
? HYPERLINK “” \l “CONTENTS” ??
Red Dragon
CHAPTER 13
Crawford at FBI headquarters in Washington was on the tele?phone with Graham at the Birmingham airport when his secretary leaned into the