Red Dragon (33 page)

He had tried to share with Lecter, and Lecter had betrayed him.

Still, he would like to share. He would like to share with her a little, in a way she could survive.

“
I
know it’s political,
you
know it’s political, but it’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway,” Crawford told Graham. They were walking down the State Street Mall toward the federal office building in the late afternoon. “Do what you’re doing, just write out the parallels and I’ll do the rest.”

The Chicago police department had asked the FBI’s Behavioral Science section for a detailed victim profile. Police officials said they would use it in planning disposition of extra patrols during the period of the full moon.

“Covering their ass is what they’re doing,” Crawford said, waving his bag of Tater Tots. “The victims have been affluent people, they need to stack the patrols in affluent neighborhoods. They know there’ll be a squawk about that—the ward bosses have been fighting over the extra manpower ever since Freddy lit off. If they patrol the upper-middle-class neighborhoods and he hits the South Side, God help the city fathers. But if it happens, they can point at the damned feds. I can hear it now—‘They told us to do it that way. That’s what
they
said to do.’”

“I don’t think he’s any more likely to hit Chicago than anywhere else,” Graham said. “There’s no reason to think so. It’s a jerkoff. Why can’t Bloom do the profile? He’s a consultant to Behavioral Science.”

“They don’t want it from Bloom, they want it from us. It wouldn’t do them any good to blame Bloom. Besides, he’s still in the hospital. I’m instructed to do this. Somebody on the Hill has been on the phone with Justice. Above says do it. Will you just do it?”

“I’ll do it. It’s what I’m doing anyway.”

“That’s what I know,” Crawford said. “Just keep doing it.”

“I’d rather go back to Birmingham.”

“No,” Crawford said. “Stay with me on this.”

The last of Friday burned down the west.

Ten days to go.

“Ready to tell me what kind of an ‘outing’ this is?” Reba McClane asked Dolarhyde on Saturday morning when they had ridden in silence for ten minutes. She hoped it was a picnic.

The van stopped. She heard Dolarhyde roll down his window.

“Dolarhyde,” he said. “Dr. Warfield left my name.”

“Yes, sir. Would you put this under your wiper when you leave the vehicle?”

They moved forward slowly. Reba felt a gentle curve in the road. Strange and heavy odors on the wind. An elephant trumpeted.

“The zoo,” she said. “Terrific.” She would have preferred a picnic. What the hell, this was okay. “Who’s Dr. Warfield?”

“The zoo director.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“No. We did the zoo a favor with the film. They’re paying back.”

“How?”

“You get to touch the tiger.”

“Don’t surprise me too much!”

“Did you ever look at a tiger?”

She was glad he could ask the question. “No. I remember a puma when I was little. That’s all they had at the zoo in Red Deer. I think we better talk about this.”

“They’re working on the tiger’s tooth. They have to put him to . . . sleep. If you want to, you can touch him.”

“Will there be a crowd, people waiting?”

“No. No audience. Warfield, me, a couple of people. TV’s coming in after we leave. Want to do it?” An odd urgency in the question.

“Hell fuzzy yes, I do! Thank you . . . that’s a fine surprise.”

The van stopped.

“Uh, how do I know he’s sound asleep?”

“Tickle him. If he laughs, run for it.”

The floor of the treatment room felt like linoleum under Reba’s shoes. The room was cool with large echoes. Radiant heat was coming from the far side.

A rhythmic shuffling of burdened feet and Dolarhyde guided her to one side until she felt the forked pressure of a corner.

It was in here now, she could smell it.

A voice. “Up, now. Easy. Down. Can we leave the sling under him, Dr. Warfield?”

“Yeah, wrap that cushion in one of the green towels and put it under his head. I’ll send John for you when we’ve finished.”

Footsteps leaving.

She waited for Dolarhyde to tell her something. He didn’t.

“It’s in here,” she said.

“Ten men carried it in on a sling. It’s big. Ten feet. Dr. Warfield’s listening to its heart. Now he’s looking under one eyelid. Here he comes.”

A body damped the noise in front of her.

“Dr. Warfield, Reba McClane,” Dolarhyde said.

She held out her hand. A large, soft hand took it.

“Thanks for letting me come,” she said. “It’s a treat.”

“Glad you
could
come. Enlivens my day. We appreciate the film, by the way.”

Dr. Warfield’s voice was middle-aged, deep, cultured, black. Virginia, she guessed.

“We’re waiting to be sure his respiration and heartbeat are strong and steady before Dr. Hassler starts. Hassler’s over there adjusting his head mirror. Just between us, he only wears it to hold down his toupee. Come meet him. Mr. Dolarhyde?”

“You go ahead.”

She put out her hand to Dolarhyde. The pat was slow in coming, light when it came. His palm left sweat on her knuckles.

Dr. Warfield placed her hand on his arm and they walked forward slowly.

“He’s sound asleep. Do you have a general impression . . . ? I’ll describe as much as you like.” He stopped, uncertain how to put it.

“I remember pictures in books when I was a child, and I saw a puma once in the zoo near home.”

“This tiger is like a super puma,” he said. “Deeper chest, more massive head, and a heavier frame and musculature. He’s a four-year-old male Bengal. He’s about ten feet long, from his nose to the tip of his tail, and he weighs eight hundred and fifteen pounds. He’s lying on his right side under bright lights.”

“I can feel the lights.”

“He’s striking, orange and black stripes, the orange is so bright it seems almost to bleed into the air around him.” Suddenly Dr. Warfield feared that it was cruel to talk of colors. A glance at her face reassured him.

“He’s six feet away, can you smell him?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Dolarhyde may have told you, some dimwit poked at him through the barrier with one of our gardener’s spades. He snapped off the long fang on the upper left side on the blade. Okay, Dr. Hassler?”

“He’s fine. We’ll give it another minute or two.”

Warfield introduced the dentist to Reba.

“My dear, you’re the first
pleasant
surprise I’ve ever had from Frank Warfield,” Hassler said. “You might like to examine this. It’s a gold tooth, fang actually.” He put it in her hand. “Heavy, isn’t it? I cleaned up the broken tooth and took an impression several days ago, and today I’ll cap it with this one. I could have done it in white of course, but I thought this would be more fun. Dr. Warfield will tell you I never pass up an opportunity to show off. He’s too inconsiderate to let me put an advertisement on the cage.”

She felt the taper, curve, and point with her sensitive battered fingers. “What a nice piece of work!” She heard deep, slow breathing nearby.

“It’ll give the kids a start when he yawns,” Hassler said. “And I don’t think it’ll tempt any thieves. Now for the fun. You’re not apprehensive, are you? Your muscular gentleman over there is watching us like a ferret. He’s not making you do this?”

“No! No, I want to.”

“We’re facing his back,” Dr. Warfield said. “He’s just sleeping away about two and a half feet from you, waist-high on a work table. Tell you what: I’ll put your left hand—you’re right-handed, aren’t you?—I’ll put your left hand on the edge of the table and you can explore with your right. Take your time. I’ll be right here beside you.”

“So will I,” Dr. Hassler said. They were enjoying this. Under the hot lights her hair smelled like fresh sawdust in the sun.

Reba could feel the heat on the top of her head. It made her scalp tingle. She could smell her warm hair, Warfield’s soap, alcohol and disinfectant, and the cat. She felt a touch of faintness, quickly over.

She gripped the edge of the table and reached out tentatively until her fingers touched tips of fur, warm from the lights, a cooler layer and then a deep steady warmth from below. She flattened her hand on the thick coat and moved it gently, feeling the fur slide across her palm, with and against the lay, felt the hide slide over the wide ribs as they rose and fell.

She gripped the pelt and fur sprang between her fingers. In the very presence of the tiger her face grew pink and she lapsed into blindisms, inappropriate facial movements she had schooled herself against.

Warfield and Hassler saw her forget herself and were glad. They saw her through a wavy window, a pane of new sensation she pressed her face against.

As he watched from the shadows, the great muscles in Dolarhyde’s back quivered. A drop of sweat bounced down his ribs.

“The other side’s all business,” Dr. Warfield said close to her ear.

He led her around the table, her hand trailing down the tail.

A sudden constriction in Dolarhyde’s chest as her fingers trailed over the furry testicles. She cupped them and moved on.

Warfield lifted a great paw and put it in her hand. She felt the roughness of the pads and smelled faintly the cage floor. He pressed a toe to make the claw slide out. The heavy, supple muscles of the shoulders filled her hands.

She felt the tiger’s ears, the width of its head and, carefully, the veterinarian guiding her, touched the roughness of its tongue. Hot breath stirred the hair on her forearms.

Last, Dr. Warfield put the stethoscope in her ears. Her hands on the rhythmic chest, her face upturned, she was filled with the tiger heart’s bright thunder.

 

 

 

Reba McClane was quiet, flushed, elated as they drove away. She turned to Dolarhyde once and said slowly, “Thank you . . . very much. If you don’t mind, I would dearly love a martini.”

 

 

 

“Wait here a minute,” Dolarhyde said as he parked in his yard.

She was glad they hadn’t gone back to her apartment. It was stale and safe. “Don’t tidy up. Take me in and tell me it’s neat.”

“Wait here.”

He carried in the sack from the liquor store and made a fast inspection tour. He stopped in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hands over his face. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He felt danger, but not from the woman. He couldn’t look up the stairs. He had to do something and he didn’t know how. He should take her back home.

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this.

Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything.

He came outside, into the sunset, into the long blue shadow of the van. Reba McClane held on to his shoulders until her foot touched the ground.

She felt the loom of the house. She sensed its height in the echo of the van door closing.

“Four steps on the grass. Then there’s a ramp,” he said.

She took his arm. A tremor through him. Clean perspiration in cotton.

“You
do
have a ramp. What for?”

“Old people were here.”

“Not now, though.”

“No.”

“It feels cool and tall,” she said in the parlor. Museum air. And was that incense? A clock ticked far away. “It’s a big house, isn’t it? How many rooms?”

“Fourteen.”

“It’s old. The things in here are old.” She brushed against a fringed lampshade and touched it with her fingers.

Shy Mr. Dolarhyde. She was perfectly aware that it had excited him to see her with the tiger; he had shuddered like a horse when she took his arm leaving the treatment room.

An elegant gesture, his arranging that. Maybe eloquent as well, she wasn’t sure.

“Martini?”

“Let me go with you and do it,” she said, taking off her shoes.

She flicked vermouth from her finger into the glass. Two and a half ounces of gin on top, and two olives. She picked up points of reference quickly in the house—the ticking clock, the hum of a window air conditioner. There was a warm place on the floor near the kitchen door where the sunlight had fallen through the afternoon.

He took her to his big chair. He sat on the couch.

There was a charge in the air. Like fluorescence in the sea, it limned movement; she found a place for her drink on the stand beside her, he put on music.

To Dolarhyde the room seemed changed. She was the first voluntary company he ever had in the house, and now the room was divided into her part and his.

There was the music, Debussy as the light failed.

He asked her about Denver and she told him a little, absently, as though she thought of something else. He described the house and the big hedged yard. There wasn’t much need to talk.

In the silence while he changed records, she said, “That wonderful tiger, this house, you’re just full of surprises, D. I don’t think anybody knows you at all.”

“Did you ask them?”

“Who?”

“Anybody.”

“No.”

“Then how do you know that nobody knows me?” His concentration on the tongue-twister kept the tone of the question neutral.

“Oh, some of the women from Gateway saw us getting into your van the other day. Boy, were they curious. All of a sudden I have company at the Coke machine.”

“What do they want to know?”

“They just wanted some juicy gossip. When they found out there isn’t any, they went away. They were just fishing.”

“And what did they say?”

She had meant to make the women’s avid curiosity into humor directed at herself. It was not working out that way.

“They wonder about everything,” she said. “They find you very mysterious and interesting. Come on, it’s a compliment.”