The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [104]
None of them had been very smart, as far as Starling could tell, except for a greataunt who wrote wonder?fully in her diary until she got “brain fever.”
They didn't steal, though.
School was the thing in America, don't you know, and the Starlings caught on to that. One of Starling's uncles had his junior college degree cut on his tomb?stone.
Starling had lived by schools, her weapon the com?petitive exam, for all the years when there was no place else for her to go.
She knew she could pull out of this. She could be what she had always been, ever since she'd learned how it works: she could be near the top of her class, approved, included, chosen, and not sent away.
It was a matter of working hard and being careful. Her grades would be good. The Korean couldn't kill her in PE. Her name would be engraved on the big plaque in the lobby, the “Possible Board,” for extraordinary performance on the range.
In four weeks she would be a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Would she have to watch out for that fucking Kren?dler for the rest of her life?
In the presence of the Senator, he had wanted to wash his hands of her. Every time Starling thought about it, it stung. He wasn't positive that he would find evidence in the envelope. That was shocking. Picturing Krendler now in her mind, she saw him wearing Navy oxfords on his feet like the mayor, her father's boss, coming to collect the watchman's clock.
Worse, Jack Crawford in her mind seemed dimin?ished. The man was under more strain than anyone should have to bear. He had sent her in. to check out Raspail's car with no support or evidence of authority. Okay, she had asked to go under those terms--- the trouble was a fluke. But Crawford had to know there'd be trouble when Senator Martin saw her in Memphis; there would have been trouble even if she hadn't found the fuck pictures.
Catherine Baker Martin lay in this same darkness that held her now. Starling had forgotten it for a moment while she thought about her own best interests.
Pictures of the past few days punished Starling for the lapse, flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night.
It was Kimberly that haunted her now. Fat dead Kimberly who had her ears pierced trying to look pretty and saved to have her legs waxed. Kimberly with her hair gone. Kimberly her sister. Starling did not think Catherine Baker Martin would have much time for Kimberly. Now they were sisters under the skin. Kimberly lying in a funeral home full of state trooper buckaroos.
Starling couldn't look at it anymore. She tried to turn her face away as a swimmer turns to breathe.
All of Buffalo Bill's victims were women, his obses?sion was women, he lived to hunt women. Not one woman was hunting him full time. Not one woman investigator had looked at every one of his crimes.
Starling wondered if Crawford would have the nerve to use her as a technician when he had to go look at Catherine Martin. Bill would “do her tomorrow,” Crawford predicted. Do her. Do her. Do her.
“Fuck this,” Starling said aloud and put her feet on the floor.
“You're over there corrupting a moron, aren't you, Starling?” Ardelia Mapp said. “Sneaked him in here while I was asleep and now you're giving him instruc?tions--- don't think I don't hear you.”
“Sorry, Ardelia, I didn't---”
“You've got to be a lot more specific with 'em than that, Starling. You can't just say what you said. Cor?rupting morons is just like journalism, you've got to tell 'em What, When, Where, and How. I think Why gets selfexplanatory as you go along.”
“Have you got any laundry?”
“I thought you said did I have any laundry.”
“Yep, I think I'll run a load. Whatcha got?”
“Just those sweats on the back of the door.”
“Okay. Shut your eyes, I'm gonna turn on the light for just a second.”
It was not the Fourth Amendment notes for her up?coming exam that she piled on top of the clothes basket and lugged down the hall to the laundry room.
She took the Buffalo Bill file, a fourinchthick pile of hell