The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [14]
“I'm satisfied. Next item. ”
“You thought something, or---”
“Proceed to the next item, Starling.”
“Lecter s hint about Raspail's car is a dead end. It was mashed into a cube four months ago in Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas, and sold for recycling. Maybe if I go back in and talk to him, he'll tell me more.”
“You've exhausted the lead?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think the car Raspail drove was his only car?”
“It was the only one registered, he was single, I assumed---”
“Aha, hold it.” Crawford's forefinger pointed to some principle invisible in the air between them. “You assumed. You assumed, Starling. Look here.” Crawford wrote assume on a legal pad. Several of Starling's in?stnictors had picked this up from Crawford and used it, but Starling didn't reveal that she'd seen it before.
Crawford began to underline: “If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass out of u and me both.” He leaned back, pleased: “Raspail col?lected cars, did you know that?”
“No, does the estate still have them?”
“I don't know. Do you think you could manage to find out?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Where would you start?”
“His executor.”
“A lawyer in Baltimore, a Chinese, I seem to remem?ber,” Crawford said.
“Everett Yow,” Starling said: “He's in the Baltimore phone book.”
“Have you given any thought to the question of a warrant to search Raspail's car?”
Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the knowitall caterpillar in Lewis Carroll.
Starling didn't dare give it back, much. “Since Ras?pail is deceased and riot suspected of anything, if we have permission of his executor to search the car, then it is a valid search, and the fruit admissible evidence in other matters at law,” she recited.
“Precisely,” Crawford said. “Tell you what: I'll ad?vise the Baltimore field office you'll be up there. Satur?day, Starling, on your own time. Go feel the fruit, if there is any.”
Crawford made a small, successful effort not to look after her as she left. From his wastebasket he lifted in the fork of his fingers a wad of heavy mauve notegaper. He spread it on his desk. It was about his wife and it said, in an engaging hand:
O wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire
That this her fever might be it?
I'm so sorry about Bella, Jack.
Hannibal Lecter
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 8
Everett Yow drove a black Buick with a De Paul University sticker on the back window. His weight gave the Buick a slight list to the left as Clarice Starling followed him out of Baltimore in the rain. It was almost dark; Starling's day as an investigator was nearly gone and she didn't have another day to replace it. She dealt with her impatience, tapping the wheel in time with the wipers as the traffic crawled down Route 301.
Yow was intelligent, fat, and had a breathing problem. Starling guessed his age at sixty. So far he was accommodating. The lost day was not his fault; returning in the late afternoon from a weeklong business trip to Chicago, the Baltimore lawyer had come directly from the airport to his office to meet Starling.
Raspail's classic Packard had been stored since long before his death, Yow explained. It was unlicensed and never driven. Yow had seen it once, covered and in storage, to confirm its existence for the estate inventory he made shortly after his client's murder. If Investigator Starling would agree to “frankly disclose at once” any?thing she found that might be damaging to his late client's interests, he would show her the automobile, he said. A warrant and the attendant stir would not be necessary.
Starling was enjoying the use for one day of an FBI motor pool Plymouth with a cellular telephone, and she had a new ID card provided by Crawford. It simply said FEDERAL INVESTIGATOR --- and expired in a week, she no?ticed.
Their destination was Split City MiniStorage, about four miles past the city limits. Creeping along with the traffic, Starling used her telephone to find out what she could about the storage facility. By