The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [85]
Over the music he heard the elevator clank and whir as it started up. Many notes of music later, the elevator door opened and a voice he did not know said, “I'm s'posed to get the tray.”
Dr. Lecter heard the smaller one coming, Pernbry. He could see through the crack between the panels in his screen. Pembry was at the bars.
“Dr. Lecter. Come sit on the floor with your back to the bars like we did before.”
“Officer Pembry, would you mind if I just finish up here? I'm afraid my trip's gotten my digestion a little out of sorts.” It took a very long time to say.
“All right.” Pembry calling down the room, “We'll call down when we got it.”
“Can I look at him?”
“We'll call you.”
The elevator again and then only the music.
Dr. Lecter took the tube from his mouth and dried it on a piece of toilet tissue. His hands were steady, his palms perfectly dry.
In his years of detention, with his unending curios?ity, Dr. Lecter had learned many of the secret prison crafts. In all the years after he savaged the nurse in the Baltimore asylum, there had been only two lapses in the security around him, both on Barney's days off. Once a psychiatric researcher loaned him a ballpoinf pen and then forgot it. Before the man was out of the ward, Dr. Lecter had broken up the plastic barrel of the pen and flushed it down his toilet. The metal ink tube went in the rolled seam edging his mattress.
The only sharp edge in his cell at the asylum was a burr on the head of a bolt holding his cot to the wall. It was enough. In two months of rubbing, Dr. Lecter cut the required two incisions, parallel and a quarterinch, long, running along the tube from its open end. Then he cut the ink tube in two pieces one inch from the open end and flushed the long piece with the point down the toilet. Barney did not spot the calluses on his fingers from the nights of rubbing.
Six months later, an orderly left a heavyduty paper clip on some documents sent to Dr. Letter by his attor?ney. One inch of the steel clip went inside the tube and the rest went down the toilet. The little tube, smooth and short, was easy to conceal in seams of clothing, between the cheek and gum, in the rectum.
Now, behind his paper screen, Dr. Letter tapped the little metal tube on his thumbnail until the wire inside it slipped out. The wire was a tool and this was the difficult part. Dr. Lecter stuck the wire halfway into the little tube and with infinite care used it as a lever to bend down the strip of metal between the two inci?sions. Sometimes they break. Carefully, with his powerful hands, he bent the metal and it was coming. Now. The minute strip of metal was at right angles to the tube. Now, he had a handcuff key.
Dr. Lecter put his hands behind him and passed the key back and forth between them fifteen times. He put the key back in his mouth while he washed his hands and meticulously dried them. Then, with his tongue, he hid the key between the fingers of his right hand, knowing Pembry would stare at his strange left hand when it was behind his back.
“I'm ready when you are, Officer Pembry,” Dr. Lecter said. He sat on the floor of the cell and stretched his arms behind him, his hands and wrists through the bars. “Thank you for waiting.” It seemed a long speech, but it was leavened by the music.
He heard Pembry behind him now. Pembry felt his wrist to see if he had soaped it. Pembry felt his other wrist to see if he had soaped it. Pembry put the cuffs on tight. He went back to the desk for the key to the cell. Over the piano, Dr. Lecter heard the clink of the key ring as Pembry took it from the desk drawer. Now he was coming back, walking through the notes, part?ing the air that swarmed with crystal notes. This time Boyle came back with him. Dr. Lecter could hear the holes they made in the echoes of the music.
Pembry checked the cuffs again. Dr. Lecter could smell Petnbry's breath behind him. Now Pembry un?locked