The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [67]
“Barney?”
“Yes, Dr. Lecter?”
“You've been decent to me for a long time. Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
“Next time Sammie's at himself, would you say goodbye for me?”
“Sure.”
“Goodbye, Barney.”
The big orderly pushed open the doors and called to the troopers. “You want to catch the bottom there, fellows? Take it on both sides. We'll set him on the ground. Easy.”
Barney rolled. Dr. Lecter up the ramp and into the airplane. Three seats had been removed on the craft's right side. The copilot lashed the hand truck to the seat brackets in the floor.
“He's gonna fly laying down?” one trooper asked. “Has he got rubber britches on?”
“You'll just have to hold your water to Memphis, buddy ruff,” the other trooper said.
“Doctor Chilton, could I speak to you?” Barney said.
They stood outside the airplane while the wind made little twisters of dust and trash around them.
“These fellows don't know anything,” Barney said.
“I'll have some help on the other end--- experienced psychiatric orderlies. He's their responsibility now.”
“You think they'll treat him all right? You know how he is--- you have to threaten him with boredom. That's all he's afraid of. Slapping him around's no good.”
“I'd never allow that, Barney.”
“You'll be there when they question him?”
“Yes.” And you won't, Chilton added privately.
“I could get him settled on the other end and be back here just a couple of hours behind my shift,” Barney said.
“He's not your job anymore, Barney. I'll be there. I'll show them how to manage him, every step.”
“They better pay attention,” Barney said. “He will.”
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 30
Clarice Starling sat on the side of her motel bed and stared at the black telephone for almost a minute after Crawford hung up. Her hair was tousled and she had twisted her FBI Academy nightgown about her, tossing in her short sleep. She felt like she had been kicked in the stomach.
It had only been three hours since she left Dr. Lecter, and two hours since she and Crawford finished work?ing out the sheet of characteristics to check against applications at the medical centers. In that short time, while she slept, Dr. Frederick Chilton had managed to screw it up.
Crawford was coming for her. She needed to get ready, had to think about getting ready.
God dammit. God DAMMIT. GOD DAMMIT. You've killed her, Dr. Chilton. You've killed her, Dr. Fuck Face. Lecter knew some more and I could have gotten it. All gone, all gone, now. All for nothing. When Catherine Martin floats, I'll see that you have to look at her, I swear I will. You took it away from me. I really have to have something useful to do. Right now. What can I do right now, what can I do this minute? Get clean.
In the bathroom, a little basket of paperwrapped soaps, tubes of shampoo and lotion, a little sewing kit, the favors you get at a good motel.
Stepping into the shower, Starling saw in a flash herself at eight, bringing in the towels and the shampoo and paperwrapped soap to her mother when her mother cleaned motel rooms. When she was eight, there was a crow, one of a flock on the gritty wind of that sour town, and this crow liked to steal from the motel cleaning carts. It took anything bright. The crow would wait for its chance, and then rummage among the many housekeeping items on the cart. Sometimes, in an emergency takeoff, it crapped on the clean linens. One of the other cleaning women threw bleach at it, to no effect except to mottle its feathers with snowwhite patches. The blackandwhite crow was always watch?ing for Clarice to leave the cart, to take things to her mother, who was scrubbing bathrooms. Her mother was standing in the door of a motel bathroom when she told Starling she would have to go away, to live in Montana. Her mother put down the towels she was holding and sat down on the side of the motel bed and held her. Starling still dreamed about the crow, saw it now with no time to think why. Her hand came up in a shooing motion and then, as though it needed to excuse the gesture, her hand continued to her forehead to slick