The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [39]
Then she ate the Mounds and wrote a memo to Crawford suggesting they crosscheck the entomology publications' computerized mailing lists against the FBI's known offender files and the files in the cities closest to the abductions, plus felon and sexoffender files of Metro Dade, San Antonio, and Houston, the areas where the moths were most plentiful.
There was another thing, too, that she had to bring up for a second time: Lets ask Dr. Lecter why he thought the perpetrator would start taking scalps.
She delivered the paper to the night duty officer and fell into her grateful bed, the voices of the day still whispering, softer than Mapp's breathing across the room. On the swarming dark she saw the moth's wise little face. Those glowing eyes had looked at Buffalo Bill.
Out of the cosmic hangover the Smithsonian leaves came her last thought and a coda for her day: Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 15
In East Memphis, Tennes?see, Catherine Baker Martin and her best boyfriend were watching a late movie on television in his apartment and having a few hits off a bong pipe loaded with hashish. The commer?cial breaks grew longer and more frequent.
“I've got the munchies, want some popcorn?” she said.
“I'll go get it, give me your keys.”
“Sit still. I need to see if Mom called, anyway.”
She got up from the couch, a tall young woman, bigboned and well fleshed, nearly heavy, with a hand?some face and a lot of clean hair. She found her shoes under the coffee table and went outside.
The February evening was more raw than cold. A light fog off the Mississippi River hung breasthigh over the big parking area. Directly overhead she could see the dying moon, pale and thin as a bone fishhook. Looking up made her a little dizzy. She started across the parking field, navigating steadily toward her own front door a hundred yards away.
The brown panel truck was parked near her apart?ment, among some motor homes and boats on trailers.
She noticed it because it resembled the parcel delivery trucks which often brought presents from her mother.
As she passed near the truck, a lamp came on in the fog. It was a floor lamp with a shade, standing on the asphalt behind the truck. Beneath the lamp was an overstuffed armchair in redflowered chintz, the big red flowers blooming in the fog. The two items were like a furniture grouping in a showroom.
Catherine Baker Martin blinked several times and kept going. She thought the word surreal and blamed the bong. She was all right. Somebody was moving in or moving out. In. Out. Somebody was always moving at the Stonehinge Villas. The curtain stirred in her apartment and she saw her cat on the sill, arching and pressing his side against the glass.
She had her key ready, and before she used it she looked back. A man climbed out of the back of the truck. She could see by the lamplight that he had a cast on his hand and his arm was in a sling. She went inside and locked the door behind her.
Catherine Baker Martin peeped around the curtain and saw the man trying to put the chair into the back of the truck. He gripped it with his good hand and tried to boost it with his knee. The chair fell over. He righted it, licked his finger and rubbed at a spot of parkinglot grime on the chintz.
She went outside.
“Help you with that.” She got the tone just right?--- helpful and that's all.
“Would you? Thanks.” An odd, strained voice. Not a local accent.
The floor lamp lit his face from below, distorting his features, but shecould see his body plainly. He had on pressed khaki trousers and some kind of chamois shirt, unbuttoned over a freckled chest. His chin and cheeks were hairless, as smooth as a woman's, and his eyes only pinpoint gleams above his cheekbones in the shadows of the lamp.
He looked at her too, and she was sensitive to that. Men were often surprised at her size when she got close to