Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [98]
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Red Dragon
CHAPTER 32
The Chicago police worked under a media blitz, a nightly news “countdown” to the next full moon. Eleven days were left.
Chicago families were frightened.
At the same time, attendance rose at horror movies that should have died at the driveins in a week. Fascination and horror. The entrepreneur who hit the punkrock market with “Tooth Fairy” Tshirts came out with an alternate line that said “The Red Dragon Is a OneNight Stand.” Sales were divided about equally between the two.
Jack Crawford himself had to appear at a news conference with police officials after the funeral. He had received orders from Above to make the federal presence more visible; he did not make it more audible, as he said nothing.
When heavily manned investigations have little to feed on, they tend to turn upon themselves, covering the same ground over and over, beating it flat. They take on the circular shape of a hurricane or a zero.
Everywhere Graham went he found detectives, cameras, a rush of uniformed men, and the incessant crackle of radios. He needed to be still.
Crawford, ruffled from his news conference, found Graham at nightfall in the quiet of an unused jury room on the floor above the U.S. prosecutor’s office.
Good lights hung low over the green felt jury table where Graham spread out his papers and photographs. He had taken off his coat and tie and he was slumped in a chair staring at two photographs.
The Leedses’ framed picture stood before him and beside it, on a clipboard propped against a carafe, was a picture of the Jacobis.
Graham’s pictures reminded Crawford of a bullfighter’s folding shrine, ready to be set up in any hotel room. There was no photograph of Lounds. He suspected that Graham had not been thinking about the Lounds case at all. He didn’t need trouble with Graham.
“Looks like a poolroom in here,” Crawford said.
“Did you knock ‘em dead?” Graham was pale but sober. He had a quart of orange juice in his fist.
“Jesus.” Crawford collapsed in a chair. “You try to think out there, it’s like trying to take a piss on the train.”
“Any news?”
“The commissioner was popping sweat over a question and scratched his balls on television, that’s the only notable thing I saw. Watch at six and eleven if you don’t believe it.”
“Want some orange juice?”
“I’d just as soon swallow barbed wire.”
“Good. More for me.” Graham’s face was drawn. His eyes were too bright. “How about the gas?”
“God bless Liza Lake. There’re fortyone Servco Supreme franchise stations in greater Chicago. Captain Osborne’s boys swarmed those, checking sales in containers to people driving vans and trucks. Nothing yet, but they haven’t seen all shifts. Servco has 186 other stations – they’re scattered over eight states. We’ve asked for help from the local jurisdictions. It’ll take a while. If God loves me, he used a credit card. There’s a chance.”
“Not if he can suck a siphon hose, there isn’t.”
“I asked the commissioner not to say anything about the Tooth Fairy maybe living in this area. These people are spooked enough. If he told them that, this place would sound like Korea tonight when the drunks come home.”
“You still think he’s close?”
“Don’t you? It figures, Will.” Crawford picked up the Lounds autopsy report and peered at it through his halfglasses.
“The bruise on his head was older than the mouth injuries. Five to eight hours older, they’re not sure. Now, the mouth injuries were hours old when they got Lounds to the hospital. They were burned over too, but inside his mouth they could tell. He retained some chloroform in his . . . hell, someplace in his wheeze. You think he was unconscious when the Tooth Fairy bit him?”
“No. He’d want him awake.”
“That’s what I figure. All right, he takes him out with a lick on the head – that’s