The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [22]
“Is that it?”
"No. I want something Crawford can give me and I want to trade him for it. But he won't come to see me. He won't ask for my help with Buffalo Bill, even though he knows it means more young women will die.
“I can't believe that, Dr. Lecter.”
“I only want something very simple, and he could get it.” Lecter turned up the rheostat slowly in his cell. His books and drawings were gone. His toilet sat was gone. Chilton had stripped the cell to punish for Miggs.
“I've been in this room eight years, Clarice. I know that they will never, ever let me out while I'm alive. What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water.”
“Has your attorney petitioned---”
“Chilton put that television in the hall, set to a religious channel. As soon as you leave the orderly will turn the sound back up, and my attorney can't stop it, the way the court is inclined toward me now. I want to be in a federal institution and I want my books back and a view. I'll give good value for it. Crawford could do that. Ask him.”
“I can tell him what you've said.”
“He'll ignore it. And Buffalo Bill will go on and on. Wait until he scalps one and see how you like it. Ummmm... I'll tell you one thing about Buffalo Bill without ever seeing the case, and years from now when they catch him, if they ever do, you'll see that I was right and I could have helped. I could have saved lives. Clarice?”
“Yes?”
“Buffalo Bill has a twostory house,” Dr. Lecter said, and turned out his light.
He would not speak again.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 10
Clarice Starling leaned against a dice table in the FBI's casino and tried to pay attention to a lecture on moneylaundering in gambling. It had been thirtysix hours since the Baltimore County police took her deposition (via a chainsmoking twofinger typist: “See if you can get that window open if the smoke bothers you.”) and dismissed her from its jurisdiction with a reminder that murder is not a federal crime.
The network news on Sunday night showed Starling's scrap with the television cameramen and she felt sure she was deep in the glue. Through it all, no word from Crawford or from the Baltimore field office. It was as though she had dropped her report down a hole.
The casino where she now stood was small--- it had operated in a moving trailer truck until the FBI seized it and installed it in the school as a teaching aid. The narrow room was crowded with police from many jurisdictions; Starling had declined with thanks the chairs of two Texas Rangers and a Scotland Yard detective.
The rest of her class were down the hall in the Academy building, searching for hairs in the genuine motel carpet of the “SexCrime Bedroom” and dusting the “Anytown Bank” for fingerprints. Starling had spent so many hours on searches and fingerprints as a Forensic Fellow that she was sent instead to this lecture, part of a series for visiting lawmen.
She wondered if there was another reason she had been separated from the class: maybe they isolate you before you get the ax.
Starling rested her elbows on the pass line of the dice table and tried to concentrate on moneylaundering in gambling. What she thought about instead was how much the FBI hates to see its agents on television, out?side of official news conferences.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter was catnip to the media, and the Baltimore police had happily supplied Starling's name to reporters. Over and over she saw herself on the Sundaynight network news. There was “Starling of the FBI” in Baltimore, banging the jack handle against the garage door as the cameraman tried to slither under it. And here was “Federal Agent Starling” turning on the assistant with the jack handle in her hand.
On the rival network, station WPIK, lacking film of its own, had announced a personalinjury lawsuit against “Starling of the FBI” and the Bureau itself be?cause the cameraman got dirt and rust particles in his eyes when Starling banged the door.
Jonetta Johnson of WPIK was on coasttocoast with the revelation that Starling had found the remains