THANKS To the consideration of one madman and the obsession of another,
Starling now had for the moment what she always wanted, an office in the
storied subterranean corridor at Behavioral Science. It was bitter to get the
office this way.
Starling never expected to go straight to the elite Behavioral Science section
when she graduated from the FBI Academy, but she had believed that she could
earn a place there. She knew she would spend several years in field offices
first.
Starling was good at the job, but not good at office politics, and it took her
years to see that she would never go to Behavioral Science, despite the wishes
of its chief, Jack Crawford.
A major reason was invisible to her until, like an astronomer locating a black
hole, she found Deputy Assistant Inspector General Paul Krendler by his
influence on the bodies around him. He had never forgiven her for finding the
serial killer Jame Gumb ahead of him, and he could not bear the press
attention it brought her.
Once Krendler called her at home on a rainy winter night. She answered the
telephone in a robe and bunny slippers with her hair up in a towel. She would
always remember the date exactly because it was the first week of Desert
Storm. Starling was a tech agent then and she had just returned from New York,
where she had replaced the radio in the Iraqi U.N. Mission's limousine. The
new radio was just like the old one, except it broadcast conversations in the
car to a Defense Department satellite overhead. It had been a dicey maneuver
in a private garage and she was still edgy.
For a wild second, she thought Krendler had called to say she'd done a good
job.
She remembered the rain against the windows and Krendler's voice on the phone,
speech a little slurred, bar noises in the background.
He asked her out. He said he could come by in half an hour. He was married.
"I think not, Mr. Krendler," she said and pushed the record button on her
answering machine, it making the requisite legal beep, and the line went dead.
Now, years later in the office she had wanted to earn, Starling penciled her
name on a piece of scrap paper and Scotch-taped it to the door. That wasn't
funny and she tore it off again and threw it in the trash.
There was one piece of mail in her in-tray. It was a questionnaire from The
Guinness Book of World Records, which prepared to list her as having killed
more criminals than any other female law enforcement officer in United States
history. The term criminals was being used advisedly, the publisher explained,
as all of the deceased had multiple felony convictions and three had
outstanding warrants. The questionnaire went into the trash along with her
name.
She was in her second hour of pecking away at the computer workstation,
blowing stray strands of hair out of her face, when Crawford knocked on the
door and stuck his head inside.
"Brian called from the lab, Starling. Mason's X-ray and the one you got from
Barney are a match. It's Lector's arm. They'll digitize the images and compare
them, but he says there's no question. We'll post everything to the secure
Lector VICAP folder."
"What about Mason Verger?"
"We tell him the truth," Crawford said. "You and I both know he won't share,
Starling, unless he gets something he can't move on himself. But if we try to
take over his lead in Brazil at this point, it'll evaporate."
"You told me to leave it alone and I did."
"You were doing something in here."
"Mason's X ray came by DHL Express. DHL took the bar code and label
information and pinpointed the pickup location. It's in the Hotel Ibarra in
Rio."
Starling raised her hand to forestall interruption. "This is all New York
sources, now. No inquiries at all in Brazil. "Mason does his phone business, a
lot of it, through the switch-board of a sports book in Las Vegas. You can
imagine the volume of calls they take."
"Do I want to know how you found that out?"
"Strictly legit," Starling said. "Well, pretty much legit - I didn't leave
anything in his house. I've got the codes to look at his phone bill, that's
all. All the tech agents have them. Let's say he obstructs justice. With his
influence, how long would we have to beg for a warrant to trap and trace? What
could you do to him anyway if he was convicted? But he's using a sports book."
"I see it," Crawford said. "The Nevada Gaming Commission could either tap the
phone or squeeze the sports book for what we need to know, which is where the
calls go."
She nodded. "I left Mason alone just like you said."
"I can see that," Crawford said. "You can tell Mason we expect to help through
Interpol and the embassy. Tell him we need to move people down there and start
the framework for extradition. Lecter's probably committed crimes in South
America, so we better extradite before the Rio police start looking in their
files under Cannibalism. If he's in South America at all. Starling, does it
make you sick to talk to Mason?"
"I have to get in the mode. You walked me through it when we did that floater
in West Virginia. What am I saying, `floater.' She was a person named
Fredericka Bimmel, and, yes, Mason makes me sick. A lot of stuff makes me sick
lately, Jack."
Starling surprised herself into silence. She had never before addressed
Section Chief Jack Crawford by his first name, she had never planned to call
him "Jack" and it shocked her. She studied his face, a face famously hard to
read.
He nodded, his smile wry and sad. "Me too, Starling. Want a couple of these
Pepto-Bismol tablets to chew before you talk to Mason?"
Mason Verger did not bother to take Starling's call. A secretary thanked her
for the message and said he'd return her call. But he didn't get back to her
personally. To Mason, several places higher on the notification list than
Starling, the X-ray match was old news.