The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [107]
Starling got the clothes out of the dryer. The warm laundry felt good and smelled good. She hugged the warm laundry close to her chest.
Her mother with an armload of sheets.
Today is the last day of Catherine's life.
The blackandwhite crow stole from the cart. She couldn't be outside to shoo it and in the room too.
Today is the last day of Catherine's life.
Her father used an arm signal instead of the blinkers when he turned his pickup into the driveway. Playing in the yard, she thought with his big arm he showed the pickup where to turn, grandly directed it to turn.
When Starling decided what she would do, a few tears came. She put her face in the warm laundry.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 48
Crawford came out of the funeral home and looked up and down the street for Jeff with the car. Instead he saw Clarice Starling waiting under the awning, dressed in a dark suit, looking real in the light.
“Send me,” she said.
Crawford had just picked out his wife's coffin and he carried in a paper sack a pair of her shoes he had mis?takenly brought. He collected himself.
“Forgive me,” Starling said. “I wouldn't came now if there were any other time. Send me.”
Crawford jammed his hands in his pockets, turned his neck in his collar until it popped. His eyes were bright, maybe dangerous. “Send you where?”
“You sent me to get a feel for Catherine Martin--- let me go to the others. All we've got left is to find out how he hunts. How he finds them, how he picks them. I'm as good as anybody you've got at the cop stuff, better at some things. The victims are all women and there aren't any women working this. I can walk in a woman's room and know three times as much about her as a man would know, and you know that's a fact. Send me.”
“You ready to accept a recycle?”
“Yes.”
“Six months of your life, probably.”
She didn't say anything.
Crawford stubbed at the grass with his toe. He looked up at her, at the prairie distance in her eyes. She had backbone, like Bella. “Who would you start with?”
“The first one. Fredrica Bimmel, Belvedere, Ohio.”
“Not Kimberly Emberg, the one you saw.”
“He didn't start with her.” Mention Lecter? No. He'd see it on the hotline.
“Emberg would be the emotional choice, wouldn't she, Starling? Travel's by reimbursement. Got any money?” The banks wouldn't open for an hour.
“I've got some left on my Visa.”
Crawford dug in his pockets. He gave her three hun?dred dollars cash and a personal check.
“Go, Starling. Just to the first one. Post the hotline. Call me.”
She raised her hand to him. She didn't touch his face or his hand, there didn't seem to be any place to touch, and she turned and ran for the Pinto.
Crawford patted his pockets as she drove away. He had given her the last cent he had with him.
“Baby needs a new pair of shoes,” he said. “My baby doesn't need any shoes.” He was crying in the middle of the sidewalk, sheets of tears on his face, a Section Chief of the FBI, silly now.
Jeff from the car saw his cheeks shine and backed into an alley where Crawford couldn't see him. Jeff got out of the car. He lit a cigarette and smoked furiously. As his gift to Crawford he would dawdle until Craw?ford was dried off and pissed off and justified in chew?ing him out.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 49
On the morning of the fourth day, Mr. Gumb was ready to harvest the hide.
He came in from shopping with the last things he needed, and it was hard to keep from running down the basement stairs. In the studio he unpacked his shop?ping bags, new bias seambinding, panels of stretchy Lycra to go under the plackets, a box of kosher salt. He had forgotten nothing.
In the workroom, he laid out his knives on a clean towel beside the long sinks. The knives were four: a swaybacked skinning knife, a delicate droppoint caper that perfectly followed the curve of the indent finger in close places, a scalpel for the closest work, and a World War Iera bayonet. The rolled edge of the bayonet is the finest tool for fleshing a hide without tearing it.
In addition he had a Strycker autopsy