The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [11]
Crawford is capable of giving any medication she may need in the night. Following a nurse's directions, he practiced injections on a lemon and then on his thighs before ?he brought her home.
Crawford stands over her for perhaps three minutes, looking down into her face. A lovely scarf of silk moiré covers her hair like a turban. She insisted on it, for as long as she could insist. Now he insists on it. He moistens her lips with glycerine and removes a speck from the corner of her eye with his broad thumb. She does not stir. It is not yet time to turn her.
At the mirror, Crawford assures himself that he is not sick, that he doesn't have to go into the ground with her, that he himself is well. He catches himself doing this and it shames him.
Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 6
On Monday morning, Clarice Starling found this message from Crawford in her mailbox:
CS:
Proceed on the Raspail car. On your own time. My office will provide you a credit card number for long distance calls. Ck with me before you contact estate or go anywhere. Report Wednes?day 1600 hours.
The Director got your Lecter report over your signature. You did well.
JC
SAIC/Section 8
Starling felt pretty good. She knew Crawford was just giving her an exhausted mouse to bat around for practice. But he wanted to teach her. He wanted her to do well. For Starling, that beat courtesy every time.
Raspail had been dead far eight years. What evi?ence could have lasted in a car that long?
She knew from family experience that, because automobiles depreciate so rapidly, an appellate court will let survivors sell a car before probate, the money going into escrow. It seemed unlikely that even an estate as tangled and disputed as Raspail's would hold a car this long.
There was also the problem of time. Counting her lunch break, Starling had an hour and fifteen minutes a day free to use the telephone during business hours. She'd have to report to Crawford on Wednesday after?noon. So she had a total of three hours and fortyfive minutes to trace the car, spread over three days, if she used her study periods and made up the study at night.
She had good notes from her Investigative Procedures Classes, and she'd have a chance to ask general questions of her instructors.
During her Monday lunch, personnel at the Baltimore County Courthouse put Starling on hold and for?got her three times. During her study period she reached a friendly clerk at the courthouse, who pulled the probate records on the Raspail estate.
The clerk confirmed that permission had been granted for sale of an auto and gave Starling the make and serial number of the car, and the name of a subse?quent off the title transfer.
On Tuesday, she wasted half her lunch hour trying to chase down that name. It cost her the rest of her lunch period to find out that the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles is not equipped to trace a vehicle by serial number, only by registration number or current tag number.
On Tuesday afternoon, a downpour drove the trainees in from the firing range. In a conference room steamy with damp clothing and sweat, John Brigham, the exMarine firearms instructor, chose to test Starling's hand strength in front of the class by seeing how many times she could pull the trigger on a Model 19 Smith & Wesson in sixty seconds.
She managed seventyfour with her left hand, puffed a strand of hair out of her eyes, and started over with her right while another student counted. She was in the Weaver stance, well braced, the front sight in sharp focus, the rear sight and her makeshift target properly blurred. Midway through her minute, she let her mind wander to get it off the pain. The target on the wall came into focus. It was a certificate of appreciation from the Interstate Commerce enforcement division made out to her instructor, John Brigham.
She questioned Brigham out of the side of her mouth while the other