“Where was he?”
“On the night of June 28?” Metcalf’s eyes were hooded as he looked at Graham. “The police wondered about that, and so did I. He went to a movie and then back to school. It’s verified. Besides, he has type-O blood. Mr. Graham, I have to pick up my wife in half an hour. We can talk tomorrow if you like. Tell me how I can help you.”
“I’d like to see the Jacobis’ personal effects. Diaries, pictures, whatever.”
“There’s not much of that—they lost about everything in a fire in Detroit before they moved down here. Nothing suspicious—Ed was welding in the basement and the sparks got into some paint he had stored down there and the house went up.
“There’s some personal correspondence. I have it in the lockboxes with the small valuables. I don’t remember any diaries. Everything else is in storage. Niles may have some pictures, but I doubt it. Tell you what—I’m going to court at nine-thirty in the morning, but I could get you into the bank to look at the stuff and come back by for you afterward.”
“Fine,” Graham said. “One other thing. I could use copies of everything to do with the probate: claims against the estate, any contest of the will, correspondence. I’d like to have all the paper.”
“The Atlanta DA’s office asked me for that already. They’re comparing with the Leeds estate in Atlanta, I know,” Metcalf said.
“Still, I’d like copies for myself.”
“Okay, copies to you. You don’t really think it’s money, though, do you?”
“No. I just keep hoping the same name will come up here and in Atlanta.”
“So do I.”
Student housing at Bardwell Community College was four small dormitory buildings set around a littered quadrangle of beaten earth. A stereo war was in progress when Graham got there.
Opposing sets of speakers on the motel-style balconies blared at each other across the quad. It was Kiss versus the 1812 Overture. A water balloon arched high in the air and burst on the ground ten feet from Graham.
He ducked under a clothesline and stepped over a bicycle to get through the sitting room of the suite Niles Jacobi shared. The door to Jacobi’s bedroom was ajar and music blasted through the crack. Graham knocked.
No response.
He pushed open the door. A tall boy with a spotty face sat on one of the twin beds sucking on a four-foot bong pipe. A girl in dungarees lay on the other bed.
The boy’s head jerked around to face Graham. He was struggling to think.
“I’m looking for Niles Jacobi.”
The boy appeared stupefied. Graham switched off the stereo.
“I’m looking for Niles Jacobi.”
“Just some stuff for my asthma, man. Don’t you ever knock?”
“Where’s Niles Jacobi?”
“Fuck if I know. What do you want him for?”
Graham showed him the tin. “Try real hard to remember.”
“Oh, shit,” the girl said.
“Narc, goddammit. I ain’t worth it, look, let’s talk about this a minute, man.”
“Let’s talk about where Jacobi is.”
“I think I can find out for you,” the girl said.
Graham waited while she asked in the other rooms. Everywhere she went, commodes flushed.
There were few traces of Niles Jacobi in the room— one photograph of the Jacobi family lay on a dresser. Graham lifted a glass of melting ice off it and wiped away the wet ring with his sleeve.
The girl returned. “Try the Hateful Snake,” she said.
The Hateful Snake bar was in a storefront with the windows painted dark green. The vehicles parked outside were an odd assortment, big trucks looking bob-tailed without their trailers, compact cars, a lilac convertible, old Dodges and Chevrolets crippled with high rear ends for the drag-strip look, four full-dress Harley-Davidsons.
An air conditioner, mounted in the transom over the door, dripped steadily onto the sidewalk.
Graham ducked around the dribble and went inside.
The place was crowded and smelled of disinfectant and stale Canoe. The bartender, a husky woman in overalls, reached over heads at the service bar to hand Graham his Coke. She was the only woman there.
Niles Jacobi, dark and razor-thin, was at the jukebox. He put the money in the machine, but the man beside him pushed the buttons.
Jacobi looked like a dissolute schoolboy, but the one selecting the music did not.
Jacobi’s companion was a strange mixture; he had a boyish face on a knobby, muscular body. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, worn white over the objects in his pockets. His arms were knotty with muscle, and he had large, ugly hands. One professional tattoo on his left forearm said “Born to Fuck.” A crude jailhouse tattoo on his other arm said “Randy.” His short jail haircut had grown out unevenly. As he reached for a button on the lighted jukebox, Graham saw a small shaved patch on his forearm.
Graham felt a cold place in his stomach.
He followed Niles Jacobi and “Randy” through the crowd to the back of the room. They sat in a booth.
Graham stopped two feet from the table.
“Niles, my name is Will Graham. I need to talk with you for a few minutes.”
Randy looked up with a bright false smile. One of his front teeth was dead. “Do I know you?”
“No. Niles, I want to talk to you.”
Niles arched a quizzical eyebrow. Graham wondered what had happened to him in Chino.
“We were having a private conversation here. Butt out,” Randy said.
Graham looked thoughtfully at the marred muscular forearms, the dot of adhesive in the crook of the elbow, the shaved patch where Randy had tested the edge of his knife. Knife fighter’s mange.
I’m afraid of Randy. Fire or fall back.
“Did you hear me?” Randy said. “Butt out.”
Graham unbuttoned his jacket and put his identification on the table.
“Sit still, Randy. If you try to get up, you’re gonna have two navels.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Instant inmate sincerity.
“Randy, I want you to do something for me. I want you to reach in your left back pocket. Just use two fingers. You’ll find a five-inch knife in there with a Flicket clamped to the blade. Put it on the table. . . . Thank you.”
Graham dropped the knife into his pocket. It felt greasy.
“Now, in your other pocket is your wallet. Get it out. You sold some blood today, didn’t you?”
“So what?”
“So hand me the slip they gave you, the one you show next time at the blood bank. Spread it out on the table.”
Randy had type-O blood. Scratch Randy.
“How long have you been out of jail?”
“Three weeks.”
“Who’s your parole officer?”
“I’m not on parole.”
“That’s probably a lie.” Graham wanted to roust Randy. He could get him for carrying a knife over the legal length. Being in a place with a liquor license was a parole violation. Graham knew he was angry at Randy because he had feared him.
“Randy.”
“Yeah.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you, I didn’t know my father very well,” Niles Jacobi said as Graham drove him to the school. “He left Mother when I was three, and I didn’t see him after that—Mother wouldn’t have it.”
“He came to see you last spring.”
“Yes.”
“At Chino.”
“You know about that.”
“I’m just trying to get it straight. What happened?”
“Well, there he was in Visitors, uptight and trying not to look around—so many people treat it like the zoo. I’d heard a lot about him from Mother, but he didn’t look so bad. He was just a man standing there in a tacky sport coat.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I expected him either to jump right in my shit or to be real guilty, that’s the way it goes mostly in Visitors. But he j
ust asked me if I thought I could go to school. He said he’d go custody if I’d go to school. And try. ‘You have to help yourself a little. Try and help yourself, and I’ll see you get in school,’ and like that.”
“How long before you got out?”
“Two weeks.”
“Niles, did you ever talk about your family while you were in Chino? To your cellmates or anybody?”
Niles Jacobi looked at Graham quickly. “Oh. Oh, I see. No. Not about my father. I hadn’t thought about him in years, why would I talk about him?”
“How about here? Did you ever take any of your friends over to your parents’ house?”
“Parent, not parents. She was not my mother.”
“Did you ever take anybody over there? School friends or . . .”
“Or rough trade, Officer Graham?”
“That’s right.”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Not once.”
“Did he ever mention any kind of threat, was he ever disturbed about anything in the last month or two before it happened?”
“He was disturbed the last time I talked to him, but it was just my grades. I had a lot of cuts. He bought me two alarm clocks. There wasn’t anything else that I know of.”
“Do you have any personal papers of his, correspondence, photographs, anything?”
“No.”
“You have a picture of the family. It’s on the dresser in your room. Near the bong.”
“That’s not my bong. I wouldn’t put that filthy thing in my mouth.”
“I need the picture. I’ll have it copied and send it back to you. What else do you have?”
Jacobi shook a cigarette out of his pack and patted his pockets for matches. “That’s all. I can’t imagine why they gave that to me. My father smiling at Mrs. Jacobi and all the little Munchkins. You can have it. He never looked like that to me.”
Graham needed to know the Jacobis. Their new acquaintances in Birmingham were little help.
Byron Metcalf gave him the run of the lockboxes. He read the thin stack of letters, mostly business, and poked through the jewelry and the silver.
For three hot days he worked in the warehouse where the Jacobis’ household goods were stored. Metcalf helped him at night. Every crate on every pallet was opened and their contents examined. Police photographs helped Graham see where things had been in the house.
Most of the furnishings were new, bought with the insurance from the Detroit fire. The Jacobis hardly had time to leave their marks on their possessions.
One item, a bedside table with traces of fingerprint powder still on it, held Graham’s attention. In the center of the tabletop was a blob of green wax.
For the second time he wondered if the killer liked candlelight.
The Birmingham forensics unit was good about sharing.
The blurred print of the end of a nose was the best Birmingham and Jimmy Price in Washington could do with the soft-drink can from the tree.
The FBI laboratory’s Firearms and Toolmarks section reported on the severed branch. The blades that clipped it were thick, with a shallow pitch: It had been done with a bolt cutter.
Document section had referred the mark cut in the bark to the Asian Studies department at Langley.
Graham sat on a packing case at the warehouse and read the long report. Asian Studies advised that the mark was a Chinese character which meant “You hit it” or “You hit it on the head”—an expression sometimes used in gambling. It was considered a “positive” or “lucky” sign. The character also appeared on a Mah-Jongg piece, the Asian scholars said. It marked the Red Dragon.
13
Crawford at FBI headquarters in Washington was on the telephone with Graham at the Birmingham airport when his secretary leaned into the office and flagged his attention.
“Dr. Chilton at Baltimore Hospital on 2706. He says it’s urgent.”
Crawford nodded. “Hang on, Will.” He punched the telephone. “Crawford.”
“Frederick Chilton, Mr. Crawford, at the—”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I have a note here, or two pieces of a note, that appears to be from the man who killed those people in Atlanta and—”
“Where did you get it?”
“From Hannibal Lecter’s cell. It’s written on toilet tissue, of all things, and it has teeth marks pressed in it.”
“Can you read it to me without handling it any more?”
Straining to sound calm, Chilton read it:
My dear Dr. Lecter,
I wanted to tell you I’m delighted that you have taken an interest in me. And when I learned of your vast correspondence I thought Dare I? Of course I do. I don’t believe you’d tell them who I am, even if you knew. Besides, what particular body I currently occupy is trivia.
The important thing is what I am Becoming. I know that you alone can understand this. I have some things I’d love to show you. Someday, perhaps, if circumstances permit. I hope we can correspond . . .
“Mr. Crawford, there’s a hole torn and punched out. Then it says:
I have admired you for years and have a complete collection of your press notices. Actually, I think of them as unfair reviews. As unfair as mine. They like to sling demeaning nicknames, don’t they? The Tooth Fairy. What could be more inappropriate? It would shame me for you to see that if I didn’t know you had suffered the same distortions in the press.
Investigator Graham interests me. Odd-looking for a flatfoot, isn’t he? Not very handsome, but purposeful-looking.
You should have taught him not to meddle.
Forgive the stationery. I chose it because it will dissolve very quickly if you should have to swallow it.
“There’s a piece missing here, Mr. Crawford. I’ll read the bottom part:
If I hear from you, next time I might send you something wet. Until then I remain your
Avid Fan
Silence after Chilton finished reading. “Are you there?”
“Yes. Does Lecter know you have the note?”
“Not yet. This morning he was moved to a holding cell while his quarters were cleaned. Instead of using a proper rag, the cleaning man was pulling handfuls of toilet paper off the roll to wipe down the sink. He found the note wound up in the roll and brought it to me. They bring me anything they find hidden.”
“Where’s Lecter now?”
“Still in the holding cell.”
“Can he see his quarters at all from there.”
“Let me think. . . . No, no, he can’t.”
“Wait a second, Doctor.” Crawford put Chilton on hold. He stared at the two winking buttons on his telephone for several seconds without seeing them. Crawford, fisher of men, was watching his cork move against the current. He got Graham again.
“Will . . . a note, maybe from the Tooth Fairy, hidden in Lecter’s cell at Baltimore. Sounds like a fan letter. He wants Lecter’s approval, he’s curious about you. He’s asking questions.”
“How was Lecter supposed to answer?”
“Don’t know yet. Part’s torn out, part’s scratched out. Looks like there’s a chance of correspondence as long as Lecter’s not aware that we know. I want the note for the lab and I want to toss his cell, but it’ll be risky. If Lecter gets wise, who knows? He could warn the bastard. We need the link but we need the note too.”
Crawford told Graham where Lecter was held, how the note was found. “It’s forty miles over to Baltimore. I can’t wait for you, buddy. What do you think?”
“Ten people dead in a month—we can’t play a long mail game. I say go for it.”
“I am,” Crawford said.
“See you in two hours.”
Crawford hailed his secretary. “Sarah, order a helicopter. I want the next thing smoking and I don’t care whose it is—ours, DCPD or Marines. I’ll be on the roof in five minutes. Call Documents, tell them to have a document case up there. Tell Herbert to scramble a search team. On the roof. Five minutes.”
/> He picked up Chilton’s line.
“Dr. Chilton, we have to search Lecter’s cell without his knowledge and we need your help. Have you mentioned this to anybody else?”
“No.”
“Where’s the cleaning man who found the note?”
“He’s here in my office.”
“Keep him there, please, and tell him to keep quiet. How long has Lecter been out of his cell?”
“About half an hour.”
“Is that unusually long?”
“No, not yet. But it takes only about a half-hour to clean it. Soon he’ll begin to wonder what’s wrong.”
“Okay, do this for me: Call your building superintendent or engineer, whoever’s in charge. Tell him to shut off the water in the building and to pull the circuit breakers on Lecter’s hall. Have the super walk down the hall past the holding cell carrying tools. He’ll be in a hurry, pissed off, too busy to answer any questions—got it? Tell him he’ll get an explanation from me. Have the garbage pickup canceled for today if they haven’t already come. Don’t touch the note, okay? We’re coming.”
Crawford called the section chief, Scientific Analysis. “Brian, I have a note coming in on the fly, possibly from the Tooth Fairy. Number-one priority. It has to go back where it came from within the hour and unmarked. It’ll go to Hair and Fiber, Latent Prints, and Documents, then to you, so coordinate with them, will you? . . . Yes. I’ll walk it through. I’ll deliver it to you myself.”
It was warm—the federally mandated eighty degrees—in the elevator when Crawford came down from the roof with the note, his hair blown silly by the helicopter blast. He was mopping his face by the time he reached the Hair and Fiber section of the laboratory.
Hair and Fiber is a small section, calm and busy. The common room is stacked with boxes of evidence sent by police departments all over the country; swatches of tape that have sealed mouths and bound wrists, torn and stained clothing, deathbed sheets.