Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [50]
"We have to use two messages in the same edition. The first one warns the Tooth Fairy that his enemies are closer than he thinks. It tells him he made a bad mistake in Atlanta and if he repeats the mis?take he's doomed. It tells him Lecter has mailed 'secret information' I showed Lecter about what we're doing, how close we are, the leads we have. It directs the Tooth Fairy to a second message that begins with 'your signature.'
“The second message begins 'Avid Fan . . .' and contains the address of the mail drop. We have to do it that way. Even in rounda?bout language, the warning in the first message is going to excite some casual nuts. If they can't find out the address, they can't come to the drop and screw things up.”
“Good. Damn good. Want to wait it out in my office?”
“I'd rather be doing something. I need to see Brian Zeller.”
“Go ahead, I can get you in a hurry if I have to.” Graham found the section chief in Serology.
“Brian, could you show me a couple of things?”
“Sure, what?”
“The samples you used to type the Tooth Fairy.”
Zeller looked at Graham through the closerange section of his bi?focals. “Was there something in the report you didn't understand?”
“No.”
“Was something unclear?”
“No.”
“Something incomplete?” Zeller mouthed the word as if it had an unpleasant taste.
“Your report was fine, couldn't ask for better. I just want to hold the evidence in my hand.”
“Ah, certainly. We can do that.” Zeller believed that all field men retain the superstitions of the hunt. He was glad to humor Graham. “It's all together down at that end.”
Graham followed him between the long counters of apparatus. “You're reading Tedeschi.”
“Yes,” Zeller said over his shoulder. “We don't do any forensic medicine here, as you know, but Tedeschi has a lot of useful things in there. Graham. Will Graham. You wrote the standard monograph on determining time of death by insect activity, didn't you. Or do I have the right Graham?”
“I did it.” A pause. “You're right, Mant and Nuorteva in the Tedeschi are better on insects.”
Zeller was surprised to hear his thought spoken. “Well, it does have more pictures and a table of invasion waves. No offense.”
“Of course not. They're better. I told them so.”
Zeller gathered vials and slides from a cabinet and a refrigerator and set them on the laboratory counter. “If you want to ask me anything, I'll be where you found me. The stage light on this microscope is on the side here.”
Graham did not want the microscope. He doubted none of Zeller's findings. He didn't know what he wanted. He raised the vials and slides to the light, and a glassine envelope with two blond hairs found in Birmingham. A second envelope held three hairs found on Mrs. Leeds.
There were spit and hair and semen on the table in front of Graham and empty air where he tried to see an image, a face, some?thing to replace the shapeless dread he carried.
A woman's voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. “Graham, Will Graham, to Special Agent Crawford's office. On Red.”
He found Sarah in her headset typing, with Crawford looking over her shoulder.
“Chicago's got an ad order with 666 in it,” Crawford said out of the side of his mouth. “They're dictating it to Sarah now. They said part of it looks like code.”
The lines were climbing out of Sarah's typewriter.
Deer Pilgrim,
You honor me . . .
“That's it. That's it,” Graham said. “Lecter called him a pilgrim when he was talking to me.”
You’re very beautiful . . .
“Christ,” Crawford said.
I offer 100 prayers for your safety.
Find help in John 6:22, 8:16, 9:1; Luke 1:7, 3:1; Galatians 6:11, 15:2; Acis 3:3; Revelation 18:7; Jonah 6:8 . . .
The typing slowed as Sarah read back each pair of numbers to the agent in Chicago. When she had finished, the list of