The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [117]
Her job, her duty, was to think about Fredrica and how Gumb might have gotten her. A criminal prosecu?tion of Buffalo Bill would require all the facts.
Think about Fredrica, stuck here all her young life. Where would she look for the exit? Did her longings resonate with Buffalo Bill's? Did that draw them to?gether? Awful thought, that he might have understood her out of his own experience; empathized even, and still helped himself to her skin.
Starling stood at the edge of the water.
Almost every place has a moment of the day, an angle and intensity of light, in which it looks its best. When you're stuck someplace, you learn that time and you look forward to it. This, midafternoon, was proba?bly the time for the Licking River behind Fell Street. Was this the Bimmel girl's time to dream? The pale sun raised enough vapor off the water to blur the old refrig?erators and ranges dumped in the brush on the far side of the backwater. The northeast wind, opposite the light, pushed the cattails toward the sun.
A piece of white PVC pipe led from Mr. Bimmel's shed toward the river. It gurgled and a brief rush of bloody water came out, staining the old snow. Bimmel came out into the sun. The front of his trousers was flecked with blood and he carried some pink and gray lumps in a plastic food bag.
“Squab,” he said, when he saw Starling looking. “Ever eat squab?”
“No,” Starling said, turning back to the water, “I've eaten doves.”
“Never have to worry about biting on a shot in these.”
“Mr. Bimmel, did - Fredrica know anybody from Calumet City or the Chicago area?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“Had she ever been to Chicago, to your knowledge?”
“What do you mean, 'to my knowledge?' You think a girl of mine's going off to Chicago and I don't know it? She didn't go to Columbus I didn't know it.”
“Did she know any men that sew, tailors or sailmak?ers?”
“She sewed for everybody. She could sew like her mother. I don't know of any men. She sewed for stores, for ladies, I don't know who.”
“Who was her best friend, Mr. Bimmel? Who did she hang out with?” Didn't mean to say “hang. ” Good, it didn't slick him--- he's just pissed off.
“She didn't hang out like the goodfornothings. She always had some work. God didn't make her pretty, he made her busy.”
“Who would you say was her best friend?”
“Stacy Hubka, I guess, since they were little. Fre?drica's mother, used to say Stacy went around with Fredrica just to have somebody to wait on her, I don't know.”
“Do you know where I could get in touch with her?”
“Stacy worked at the insurance, I guess she still does. The Franklin Insurance.”
Starling walked to her car across the rutted yard, her head down, hands deep in her pockets. Fredrica's cat watched her from the high window.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 54
FBI credentials get a snap?pier response the farther west you go. Starling's ID, which might have raised one bored eyebrow on a Washington functionary, got the undivided attention of Stacy Hubka's boss at the Franklin Insurance Agency in Belvedere, Ohio. He re?lieved Stacy Hubka at the counter and the telephones himself, and offered Starling the privacy of his cubicle for the interview.
Stacy Hubka had a round, downy face and stood fivefour in heels. She wore her hair in frosted wings and used a Cher Bono move to brush them back from her face. She looked Starling up and down whenever Starling wasn't facing her.
“Stacy--- may I call you Stacy?”
“Sure.”
“I'd like you to tell me, Stacy, how you think this might have happened to Fredrica Bimmel--- where this man might have spotted Fredrica.”
“Freaked me out. Get your skin peeled off, is that a bummer? Did you see her? They said she was just like rags, like somebody let the air out of---”
“Stacy, did she ever mention anybody from Chicago or Calumet City?”
Calumet City. The clock above Stacy Hubka's head worried Starting. If the Hostage