The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [31]
Starling watched the first Polaroid print of the molars develop, adjusted the lightness control and tried again. This print was better. This one was very good.
“She's got something in her throat,” Starling said.
Crawford looked at the picture. It showed a dark cylindrical object just behind the soft palate. “Give me the flashlight.”
“When a body comes out of the water, a lot of times there's like leaves and things in the mouth,” Lamar said, helping Crawford to look.
Starling took some forceps out of her bag. She looked at Crawford across the body. He nodded. It only took her a second to get it.
“What is it, some kind of seed pod?” Crawford said.
“Nawsir, that's a bug cocoon,” Lamar said. He was right.
Starling put it in a jar.
“You might want the county agent to look at that,” Lamar said.
Facedown, the body was easy to fingerprint. Starling had been prepared for the worst--- but none of the tedi?ous and delicate injection methods or finger stalls were necessary. She took the prints on thin card stock held in a device shaped like a shoehorn. She did a set of plantar prints as well, in case they had only baby foot?prints from a hospital for reference.
Two triangular pieces of skin were missing from high on the shoulders. Starling took pictures.
“Measure too,” Crawford said. “He cut the girl from Akron when he slit her clothes off, not much more than a scratch, but it matched the cut up the back of her blouse when they found it beside the road. This is something new, though. I haven't seen this.”
“Looks like a burn across the back of her calf,” Star?ling said.
“Old people gets those a lot,” Lamar said.
“What?” Crawford said.
“I SAID OLD PEOPLE GETS THOSE A LOT.”
“I heard you fine, I want you to explain it. What about old people?”
“Old people pass away with a heating pad on them, and when they're dead it burns them, even when it's not all that hot. You burn under a heating pad when you're dead. No circulation under it.”
“We'll ask the pathologist at Claxton to test it, and see if it's postmortem,” Crawford said to Starling.
“Car muffler, most likely,” Lamar said.
“What?”
“CAR MUFFL--- car muffler. One time Billy Petrie got shot to death and they dumped him in the trunk of his car? His wife drove the car around two or three days looking for him. When they brought him in here, the muffler had got hot under the car trunk and burned him just like that, only across his hip,” Lamar said. “I can't put groceries in the trunk of my car for it melting the ice cream.”
“That's a good thought, Lamar, I wish you worked for me,” Crawford said. “Do you know the fellows that found her in the river?”
“Jabbo Franklin and his brother, Bubba.”
“What do they do?”
“Fight at the Moose, make fun of people that's not bothering them--- someone just comes in the Moose after a simple drink, worn out from looking at the bereaved all day, and it's 'Set down there, Lamar, and play ”Filipino Baby.“ ' Make a person play 'Filipino Baby' over and over on that sticky old bar piano. That's what Jabbo likes. 'Well, make up some damn words if you don't know it,' he says, 'and make the damn thing rhyme this time.' He gets a check from the Veterans and goes to dry out at the VA around Christmas. I been looking for him on this table for fifteen years.”
“We'll need serotonin tests on the fishhook punc?tures,” Crawford said. “I'm sending the pathologist a note.”
“Them hooks are too close together,” Lamar said.
“What did you say?”
“The Franklins was running a trotline with the hooks too close together. It's a violation. That's prob'ly why they didn't call it in until this morning.”
“The sheriff said they were duck hunters.”
“I expect they did tell him that,” Lamar said. “They'll tell you they wrestled Duke Keomuka in Honolulu one time too, tag team with Satellite Monroe. You can be?lieve that too, if you feel like it. Grab a croaker sack and they'll take you on a snipe hunt too, if you favor