The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [17]
Mr. Yow's voice from outside. "Okay, Miss Star?ling?„
“Okay,” she said. There were small scurryings at the sound of her voice, and, something inside a piano climbed over a few high notes. The car lights from outside lit her legs up to the calf.
“So you found the piano, Officer Starling,” Mr. Yow called.
“That wasn't me.”
“Oh.”
The car was big, tall and long. A 1938 Packard limou?sine, according to Yow's inventory. It was covered with a rug, the plush side down. She played her flashlight over it.
“Did you cover the car with this rug, Mr. Yow?”
“I found it that way and I never uncovered it,” Yow called under the door. “I can't deal with a dusty rug. That's the way Raspail had it. I just made sure the car vas there. My movers put the piano against the wall and covered it and stacked more boxes beside the car and left. I was paying them by the hour. The boxes are sheet music and books, mostly.”
The rug was thick and heavy and as she tugged at it, dust swarmed in the beam of her flashlight. She sneezed twice. Standing on tiptoe, she could fold the rug over to the midline of the tall old car. The curtains were drawn in the back windows. The door handle was covered with dust. She had to lean forward over cartons to reach it. Touching only the end of the handle, she tried to turn it downward. Locked. There was no key?hole in the rear door. She'd have to move a lot of boxes to get to the front door, and there was damn little place to put them. She could see a small gap between the curtain and the post of the rear window.
Starling leaned over boxes to put her eye close to the glass and shined her light through the crack. She could only see her reflection until she cupped her hand on top of the light. A splinter of the beam, diffused by the dusty glass, moved across the seat. An album lay open on the seat. The colors were poor in the bad light, but she could see Valentines pasted on the pages. Lacy old Valentines, fluffy on the page.
“Thanks a lot, Dr. Lecter.” When she spoke, her breath stirred the fuzz of dust on the windowsill and fogged the glass. She didn't want to wipe it, so she had to wait for it to clear. The light moved on, over a lap rug crumpled on the floor of the car and onto the dusty wink of a pair of man's patent leather evening shoes. Above the shoes, black socks and above the socks were tuxedo trousers with legs in them.
Nobody'sbeeninthatdoorinfiveyears--- easy, easy, hold it baby.
“Oh, Mr. Yow. Say, Mr. Yow?”
“Yes, Officer Starling?”
“Mr. Yow, looks like somebody's sitting in this car.”
“Oh my. Maybe you better come out, Miss Starling.”
“Not quite yet, Mr. Yow. Just wait there, if you will, please.”
Now is when it's important to think. Now is more important than all the crap you tell your pillow for the rest of your life. Suck it up and do this right. I don't want to destroy evidence. I do want some help. But most of all I don't want to cry wolf. If I scramble the Baltimore office and the cops out here for nothing, I've had it. I see what looks like some legs. Mr. Yow would not have brought me here if he'd known there was a cool one in the car. She managed to smile at herself. “Cool one” was bravado. Nobody's been here since Yow's last visit. All right, that means the boxes were put here after whatever's in the car. And that means I can move the boxes without losing anything important.
“All right, Mr. Yow.”
“Yes. Do we have to call the police, or are you suffi?cient, Officer Starling?”
“I've got to find that out. Just wait right there, please.”
The box problem was as maddening as Rubik's Cube. She tried to work with the flashlight under her arm, dropped it twice, and finally put it on top of the car. She had to put boxes behind her, and some of the shorter box cartons would slide under the car. Some kind of bite or splinter made