The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [44]
“That just proves my theory,” she told Mapp as they flopped on their beds with their books.
“What's that?”
“You meet two guys, right? The wrong one'll call you every God damned time.”
“I been knowing that.”
The telephone rang.
Mapp touched the end of her nose with her pencil. “If that's Hot Bobby Lowrance, would you tell him I'm in the library?” Mapp said. “I'll call him tomorrow, tell him.”
It was Crawford calling from an airplane, his voice scratchy on the phone. “Starling, pack for two nights and meet me in an hour.”
She thought he was gone, there was only a hollow humming on the telephone, then the voice came back abruptly:“ ---won't need the kit, just clothes.”
“Meet you where?”
“The Smithsonian.” He started talking to someone else before he punched off.
“Jack Crawford,” Starling said, flipping her bag on the bed.
Mapp appeared over the top of her Federal Code of Criminal Procedure. She watched Starling pack, an eyelid drooping over one of her great dark eyes.
“I don't want to put anything on your mind,” she said.
“Yes you do,” Starling said. She knew what was coming.
Mapp had made the Law Review at the University of Maryland while working at night. Her academic stand?ing at the academy was number two in the class, her attitude toward the books was pure banzai.
“You're supposed to take the Criminal Code exam tomorrow and the PE test in two days. You make sure Supremo Crawford knows you could get recycled if he's not careful. Soon as he says, 'Good work, Trainee Starling,' don't you say, 'The pleasure was mine.' You get right in his old Easter Island face and say, 'I'm counting on you to see to it yourself that I'm not recycled for missing school.' Understand what I'm saying?”
“I can get a makeup on the Code,” Starling said, opening a barrette with her teeth.
“Right, and you fail it with no time to study, you think they won't recycle you? Are you kidding me? Girl, they'll sail you off the back steps like a dead Easter chick. Gratitude's got a short halflife, Clarice. Make him say no recycle. You've got good grades--- make him say it. I never would find another roommate that can iron as fast as you can at one minute to class.”
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Starling had her old Pinto moving up the fourlane at a steady lope, one mile an hour below the speed where the shimmy sets in. The smells of hot oil and mildew, the rattles underneath, the transmission's whine resonated faintly with memories of her father's pickup truck, her memories of riding beside him with her squirming brothers and sister.
She was doing the driving now, driving at night, the white dashes passing under blip blip blip. She had time to think. Her fears breathed on her from close behind her neck; other, recent memories squirmed beside her.
Starling was very much afraid Catherine Baker Mar?tin's body had been found. When Buffalo Bill found out who she was, he might have panicked. He might have killed her and dumped her body with a bug in the throat.
Maybe Crawford was bringing the bug to be identi?fied. Why else would he want her at the Smithsonian? But any agent could carry a bug into the Smithsonian, an FBI messenger could do it for that matter. And he told her to pack for two days.
She could understand Crawford not explaining it to her over an unsecured radio link, but it was maddening to wonder.
She found an allnews station on the radio and waited through the weather report. When the news came, it was no help. The story from Memphis was a rehash of the seven o'clock news. Senator Martin's daughter was missing. Her blouse had been found slit up the back in the style of Buffalo Bill. No witnesses. The victim found in West Virginia remained unidenti?fied.
West Virginia. Among Clarice Starling's memories of the Potter Funeral Home was something hard and valu?able. Something durable, shining apart from the dark revelations. Something to keep. She deliberately re?called it now and found that she could squeeze it like a talisman. In the Potter Funeral Home, standing at the sink,