The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [10]
Starling would have to apply to the lawyer to get at the car. The lawyer might be protective of Raspail's memory and, with enough advance notice, might de?stroy evidence to cover for his late client.
Starling preferred to pounce, and she needed advice and authorization. She was alone in Behavioral Science and had the run of the place. She found Crawford's home number in the Rolodex.
She never heard the telephone ringing, but suddenly his voice was there, very quiet and even.
“Jack Crawford.”
“This is Clarice Starling. I hope you weren't eating dinner....” She had to continue into silence. “...Lecter told me something about the Raspail case today, I'm in the office following it up. He tells me there's something in Raspail's car. I'd have to get at it through his lawyer, and since tomorrow's Saturday--- no school--- I wanted to ask you if---”
“Starling, do you have any recollection of what I told you to do with the Lecter information?” Crawford's voice was so terribly quiet.
“Give you a report by 0900 Sunday.”
“Do that, Starling. Do just exactly that.”
“Yes sir.”
The dial tone stung in her ear. The sting spread over face and made her eyes burn.
“Well God fucking shit,” she said. “You old creep. Creepo son of a bitch. Let Miggs squirt you and see how you like it.”
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Starling, scrubbed shiny and wearing her FBI Academy nightgown, was working on the second draft of her report when her dormitory roommate, Ardelia Mapp, came in from the library. Mapp's broad, brown, eminently sane countenance was one of the more wel?come sights of her day.
Ardelia Mapp saw the fatigue in her face.
“What did you do today, girl?” Mapp always asked question as if the answers could make no possible difference.
“Wheedled a crazy man with come all over me.”
“I wish I had time for a social life--- I don't know how you manage it, and school too.”
Starling found that she was laughing. Ardelia Mapp laughed with her, as much as the small joke was worth. Starling did not stop, and she heard herself from far away, laughing and laughing. Through Starling's tears, Mapp looked strangely old and her smile had sadness in it.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 5
Jark Crawford, fifty-?three, reads in a wing chair by a low lamp in the bedroom of his home. He faces two double beds, both raised on blocks to hospital height. One is his own; in the other lies his wife, Bella. Crawford can hear her breathing through her mouth. It has been two days since she last could stir or speak to him.
She misses a breath. Crawford looks up from his book, over his halfglasses. He puts the book down. Bella breathes again, a flutter and then a full breath. He rises to put his hand on her, to take her blood pressure and her pulse. Over the months he has become expert with the blood pressure cuff.
Because he will not leave her at night, he has in?stalled a bed for himself beside her. Because he reaches out to her in the dark, his bed is high, like hers.
Except for the height of the beds and the minimal plumbing necessary for Bella's comfort, Crawford has managed to keep this from looking like a sickroom. There are flowers, but not too many. No pills are in sight--- Crawford emptied a linen closet in the hall and filled it with her medicines and apparatus before he brought her from the hospital. (It was the second time he had carried her across the threshold of that house and the thought nearly unmanned him.)
A warm front has come up from the south. The windows are open and the Virginia air is soft and fresh. Small frogs peep to one another in the dark.
The room is spotless, but the carpet has begun to begun to nap--- Crawford will not run the noisy vacuum cleaner in the room and uses a manual carpet sweeper that is not as good. He pads to the closet and turns on the light. Two clipboards hang on the inside of the door. On one he notes Bella's pulse and blood pressure. His figures and those of the day nurse alternate in a column that stretches over many yellow pages, many days and nights. On the other clipboard, the