The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [108]
Now he greased the head of a wig stand, packed coarse salt over the grease and set the stand in a shallow drip pan. Playfully he tweaked the nose on the face of the wig stand and blew it a kiss.
It was hard to behave in a responsible manner--- he wanted to fly about the room like Danny Kaye. He laughed and blew a moth away from his face with a gentle puff of air.
Time to start the aquarium pumps in his fresh tanks of solution. Oh, was there a nice chrysalis buried in the humus in the cage? He poked with his finger. Yes, there was.
The pistol, now.
The problem of killing this one had perplexed Mr. Gumb for days. Hanging her was out because he didn't want the pectoral mottling, and besides, he couldn't risk the knot tearing her behind the ear.
Mr. Gumb had learned from each of his previous efforts, sometimes painfully. He was determined to avoid some of the nightmares he'd gone through before. One cardinal principle: no matter how weak from hunger or faint with fright, they always fought you when they saw the apparatus.
He had in the past hunted young women through the blackedout basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into cor?ners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. Always they became disoriented, lost their balance, ran into things. He could stand in abso?lute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee so they could still crawl.
That was childish and a waste. They were useless afterward and he had quit doing it altogether.
In his current project, he had offered showers up?stairs to the first three, before he booted them down the staircase with a noose around their necks--- no problem. But the fourth had been a disaster. He'd had to use the pistol in the bathroom and it had taken an hour to clean up. He thought about the girl, wet, goosebumps on her, and how she shivered when he cocked the pistol. He liked to cock it, snick snick, one big bang and no more racket.
He liked his pistol,, and well he should, because it was a very handsome piece, a stainless steel Colt Py?thon with a sixinch barrel. All Python actions are tuned at the Colt custom shop, and this one was a pleasure to feel. He cocked it now and squeezed it off, catching the hammer with his thumb. He loaded the Python and put it on the workroom counter.
Mr. Gumb wanted very much to offer this one a shampoo, because he wanted to watch it comb out the hair. He could learn much for his own grooming about how the hair lay on the head. But this one was tall and probably strong. This one was too rare to risk having to waste the whole thing with gunshot wounds.
No, he'd get his hoisting tackle from the bathroom, offer her a bath, and when she had put herself securely in the hoisting sling he'd bring her halfway up the shaft of the oubliette and shoot her several times low in the spine. When she lost consciousness he could do the rest with chloroform.
That's it. He'd go upstairs now and get out of his clothes. He'd wake up Precious and watch his video with her and then go to work, naked in the warm basement, naked as the day he was born.
He felt almost giddy going up the stairs. Quickly out of his clothes and into his robe. He plugged in his videocassette.
“Precious, come on Precious. Busybusy day. Come on, Sweetheart.” He'd have to shut her up here in the upstairs bedroom while he got through with the noisy part in the basement--- she hated the noise and got terri?bly upset. To keep her occupied, he'd gotten her a whole box of Cheweez while he was out shopping.
“Precious.” When she didn't come, he called in the hall, “Precious!” and then in the kitchen, and in the basement, “Precious!” When he called at the door of the oubliette room, he got an answer:
“She's down here you son of a bitch,” Catherine Martin said.
Mr. Gumb sickened all over in a plunge of fear