The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [28]
In the private parking lot behind the house, where the hearses waited, two young deputies and one old one stood with two state troopers under a bare elm. It was not cold enough for their breath to steam.
Starling looked at these men as the cruiser pulled into the lot, and at once she knew about them. She knew they came from houses that had chifforobes instead of closets and she knew pretty much what was in the chifforobes. She knew that these men had relatives who hung their clothes in suitbags on the walls of their trailers. She knew that the older deputy had grown up with a pump on the porch and had waded to the road in the muddy spring to catch the school bus with his shoes hanging around his neck by the laces, as her father had done. She knew they had carried their lunches to school in paper sacks with grease spots on them from being used over and over and that after lunch they folded the sacks and slipped them in the back pockets of their jeans.
She wondered how much Crawford knew about their them.
There were no handles on the inside of the rear doors in the cruiser, as Starling discovered when the driver and Crawford got out and started toward the back of the funeral home. She had to bat on the glass until one of the deputies beneath the tree saw her, and the driver came back redfaced to let her out.
The deputies watched her sidelong as she passed. One said “ma'am.” She gave them a nod and a smile of the correct dim wattage as she went to join Crawford on he back porch.
When she was far enough away, one of the younger deputies, a newlywed, scratched beneath his jaw and said, “She don't look half as good as she thinks she does.”
“Well, if she just thinks she looks pretty gotdamned good, I'd have to agree with her, myself,” the other young deputy said. “I'd put her on like a Mark Five gas mask.”
“I'd just as soon have a big watermelon, if it was cold,” the older deputy said, half to himself.
Crawford was already talking to the chief deputy, a small, taut man in steelrimmed glasses and the kind of elasticsided boots the catalogs call “Romeos.”
They had moved into the funeral home's dim back corridor, where a Coke machine hummed and random odd objects stood against the wall--- a treadle sewing machine, a tricycle, and a roll of artificial grass, a striped canvas awning wrapped around its poles. On the wall was a sepia print of Saint Cecilia at the keyboard. Her hair was braided around her head, and roses tumbled onto the keys out of thin air.
“I appreciate your letting us know so fast, Sheriff,” Crawford said.
The chief deputy wasn't having any. “It was some?body from the district attorney's office called you,” he said. “I know the sheriff didn't call you--- Sheriff Per?kins is on a guided tour of Hawaii at the present time with Mrs. Perkins. I spoke to him on long distance this morning at eight o'clock, that's three A.M., Hawaii time. He'll get back to me later in the day, but he told me Job One is to find out if this is one of our local girls. It could be something that outside elements has just dumped on us. We'll tend to that before we do anything else. We've had 'em haul bodies here all the way from Phe?nix City, Alabama.”
“That's where we can help you, Sheriff. If---”
“I've been on the phone with the field services com?mander of the state troopers in Charleston. He's send?ing some officers from the Criminal Investigation Section--- what's known as the CIS. They'll give us all the backup we need.” The corridor was filling with deputy sheriffs and troopers; the chief deputy had too much of an audience. “We'll get around to you just as soon as we can, and extend you ever courtesy, work with you ever way we can, but right now---”
“Sheriff, this kind of a sex crime has some aspects that I'd rather say to you just between us men, you understand what I mean?” Crawford said, indicating Starling's presence with a small movement. of his head. He hustled the smaller man into a cluttered