Red Dragon (19 page)

“If you want to think awhile, I’ll let you alone,” she said.

He didn’t want to think. He definitely did not. “You rub my back and I’ll rub your front,” he said.

“Go to it, Buster.”

 

 

 

Winds aloft carried the thin rain out over the bay and by nine A.M. the ground steamed. The far targets on the sheriff’s department range seemed to flinch in the wavy air.

The rangemaster watched through his binoculars until he was sure the man and woman at the far end of the firing line were observing the safety rules.

The Justice Department credentials the man showed when he asked to use the range said “Investigator.” That could be anything. The rangemaster did not approve of anyone other than a qualified instructor teaching pistol-craft.

Still, he had to admit the fed knew what he was doing.

They were only using a .22-caliber revolver but he was teaching the woman combat shooting from the Weaver stance, left foot slightly forward, a good two-handed grip on the revolver with isometric tension in the arms. She was firing at the silhouette target seven yards in front of her. Again and again she brought the weapon up from the outside pocket of her shoulderbag. It went on until the rangemaster was bored with it.

A change in the sound brought the rangemaster’s glasses up again. They had the earmuffs on now and she was working with a short, chunky revolver. The rangemaster recognized the pop of the light target loads.

He could see the pistol extended in her hands and it interested him. He strolled along the firing line and stood a few yards behind them.

He wanted to examine the pistol, but this was not a good time to interrupt. He got a good look at it as she shucked out the empties and popped in five from a speedloader.

Odd arm for a fed. It was a Bulldog .44 Special, short and ugly with its startling big bore. It had been extensively modified by Mag Na Port. The barrel was vented near the muzzle to help keep the muzzle down on recoil, the hammer was bobbed and it had a good set of fat grips. He suspected it was throated for the speed-loader. One hell of a mean pistol when it was loaded with what the fed had waiting. He wondered how the woman would stand up to it.

The ammunition on the stand beside them was an interesting progression. First there was a box of lightly loaded wadcutters. Then came regular service hardball, and last was something the rangemaster had read much about but had rarely seen. A row of Glaser Safety Slugs. The tips looked like pencil erasers. Behind each tip was a copper jacket containing number-twelve shot suspended in liquid Teflon.

The light projectile was designed to fly at tremendous velocity, smash into the target and release the shot. In meat the results were devastating. The rangemaster even recalled the figures. Ninety Glasers had been fired at men so far. All ninety were instant one-shot stops. In eighty-nine of the cases immediate death resulted. One man survived, surprising the doctors. The Glaser round had a safety advantage too—no ricochets, and it would not go through a wall and kill someone in the next room.

The man was very gentle with her and encouraging, but he seemed sad about something.

The woman had worked up to the full service loads now and the rangemaster was pleased to see she handled the recoil very well, both eyes open and no flinch. True, it took her maybe four seconds to get the first one off, coming up from the bag, but three were in the X ring. Not bad for a beginner. She had some talent.

He had been back in the tower for some time when he heard the hellish racket of the Glasers going off.

She was pumping all five. It was not standard federal practice.

The rangemaster wondered what in God’s name they saw in the silhouette that it would take five Glasers to kill.

Graham came to the tower to turn in the earmuffs, leaving his pupil sitting on a bench, head down, her elbows on her knees.

The rangemaster thought he should be pleased with her, and told him so. She had come a long way in one day. Graham thanked him absently. His expression puzzled the rangemaster. He looked like a man who had witnessed an irrevocable loss.

The caller, “Mr. Pilgrim,” had said to Sarah that he might call again on the following afternoon. At FBI headquarters certain arrangements were made to receive the call.

Who was Mr. Pilgrim? Not Lecter—Crawford had made sure of that. Was Mr. Pilgrim the Tooth Fairy? Maybe so, Crawford thought.

The desks and telephones from Crawford’s office had been moved overnight to a larger room across the hall.

Graham stood in the open doorway of a soundproof booth. Behind him in the booth was Crawford’s telephone. Sarah had cleaned it with Windex. With the voiceprint spectrograph, tape recorders, and stress evaluator taking up most of her desk and another table beside it, and Beverly Katz sitting in her chair, Sarah needed something to do.

The big clock on the wall showed ten minutes before noon.

Dr. Alan Bloom and Crawford stood with Graham. They had adopted a sidelines stance, hands in their pockets.

A technician seated across from Beverly Katz drummed his fingers on the desk until a frown from Crawford stopped him.

Crawford’s desk was cluttered with two new telephones, an open line to the Bell System’s electronic switching center (ESS) and a hot line to the FBI communications room.

“How much time do you need for a trace?” Dr. Bloom asked.

“With the new switching it’s a lot quicker than most people think,” Crawford said. “Maybe a minute if it comes through all-electronic switching. More if it’s from someplace where they have to swarm the frame.”

Crawford raised his voice to the room. “If he calls at all, it’ll be short, so let’s play him perfect. Want to go over the drill, Will?”

“Sure. When we get to the point where I talk, I want to ask you a couple of things, Doctor.”

Bloom had arrived after the others. He was scheduled to speak to the behavioral-science section at Quantico later in the day. Bloom could smell cordite on Graham’s clothes.

“Okay,” Graham said. “The phone rings. The circuit’s completed immediately and the trace starts at ESS, but the tone generator continues the ringing noise so he doesn’t know we’ve picked up. That gives us about twenty seconds on him.” He pointed to the technician. “Tone generator to ‘off’ at the end of the fourth ring, got it?”

The technician nodded. “End of the fourth ring.”

“Now, Beverly picks up the phone. Her voice is different from the one he heard yesterday. No recognition in the voice. Beverly sounds bored. He asks for me. Bev says, ‘I’ll have to page him, may I put you on hold?’ Ready with that, Bev?” Graham thought it would be better not to rehearse the lines. They might sound flat by rote.

“All right, the line is open to us, dead to him. I think he’ll hold longer than he’ll talk.”

“Sure you don’t want to give him the hold music?” the technician asked.

“Hell no,” Crawford said.

“We give him about twenty seconds of hold, then Beverly comes back on and tells him, ‘Mr. Graham’s coming to the phone, I’ll connect you now.’ I pick up.” Graham turned to Dr. Bloom. “How would you play him, Doctor?”

“He’ll expect you to be skeptical about it really being him. I’d give him some polite skepticism. I’d make a strong distinction between the nuisance of fake callers and the significance, the importance, of a call from the real person. The fakes are easy to recognize because they lack the
capacity
to understand what has happened, that sort of thing.

“Make him tell something to prove who he is.” Dr. Bloom looked at the floor and kneaded the back of his neck.

“You don’t know what he wants. Maybe he wants understanding, maybe he’s fixed on you as the adversary and wants to gloat—we’ll see. Try to pick up his mood and give him what he’s after, a little at a time. I’d be very leery of appealing to him to come to us for help, unless you sense he’s asking for that.

“If he’s paranoid you’ll pick it up fast. In that case I’d play into his suspicion or grievance. Let him air it. If he gets rolling on that, he may forget how long he’s talked. That’s all I know to tell you.” Bloom put his hand on Graham’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Listen, this is not a pep talk or any bullshit; you can take him over the jumps. Never mind advice, do what seems right to you.”

Waiting. Half an hour of silence was enough.

“Call or no call, we’ve got to decide where to go from here,” Crawford said. “Want to try the mail drop?”

“I can’t see anything better,” Graham said.

“That would give us two baits, a stakeout at your house in the Keys and the drop.”

The telephone was ringing.

Tone generator on. At ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch and Beverly picked up. Sarah was listening.

“Special Agent Crawford’s office.”

Sarah shook her head. She knew the caller, one of Crawford’s cronies at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Beverly got him off in a hurry and stopped the trace. Everyone in the FBI building knew to keep the line clear.

Crawford went over the details of the mail drop again. They were bored and tense at the same time. Lloyd Bowman came around to show them how the number pairs in Lecter’s Scriptures fit page 100 of the softcover
Joy of Cooking.
Sarah passed around coffee in paper cups.

The telephone was ringing.

The tone generator took over and at ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch. Beverly picked up.

“Special Agent Crawford’s office.”

Sarah was nodding her head. Big nods.

Graham went into his booth and closed the door. He could see Beverly’s lips moving. She punched “Hold” and watched the second hand on the wall clock.

Graham could see his face in the polished receiver. Two bloated faces in the earpiece and mouthpiece. He could smell cordite from the firing range in his shirt.
Don’t hang up. Sweet Jesus, don’t hang up.
Forty seconds had elapsed. The telephone moved slightly on his table when it rang.
Let it ring. Once more.
Forty-five seconds.
Now.

“This is Will Graham, can I help you?”

Low laughter. A muffled voice: “I expect you can.”

“Could I ask who’s calling please?”

“Didn’t your secretary tell you?”

“No, but she did call me out of a meeting, sir, and—”

“If you tell me you won’t talk to Mr. Pilgrim, I’ll hang up right now. Yes or no?”

“Mr. Pilgrim, if you have some problem I’m equipped to deal with, I’ll be glad to talk with you.”

“I think you have the problem, Mr. Graham.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.”

The second hand crawled toward one minute.

“You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?” the caller said.

“Too busy to stay on the phone unless you state your business.”

“My business is in the same place yours is. Atlanta and Birmingham.”

“Do you know something about that?”

Soft laughter. “Know something about it? Are you interested in Mr. Pilgrim? Yes or no. I’ll hang up if you lie.”

Graham could see Crawford through the glass. He had a telephone receiver in each hand.

“Yes. But, see, I get a lot of calls, and most of them are from people who say they know things.” One minute.

Crawford put one receiver down and scrawled on a piece of paper.

“You’d be surprised how many pretenders there are,” Graham said. “Talk to them a few minutes and you can tell they don’t have the capacity to even understand what’s going on. Do you?”

Sarah held a sheet of paper to the glass for Graham to see. It said, “Chicago phone booth. PD scrambling.”

“I’ll tell you what, you tell me one thing you know about Mr. Pilgrim and maybe I’ll tell you whether you’re right or not,” the muffled voice said.

“Let’s get straight who we’re talking about,” Graham said.

“We’re talking about Mr. Pilgrim.”

“How do I know Mr. Pilgrim has done anything I’m interested in. Has he?”

“Let’s say, yes.”

“Are you Mr. Pilgrim?”

“I don’t think I’ll tell you that.”

“Are you his friend?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, prove it then. Tell me something that shows me how well you know him.”

“You first. You show me yours.” A nervous giggle. “First time you’re wrong, I hang up.”

“All right, Mr. Pilgrim is right-handed.”

“That’s a safe guess. Most people are.”

“Mr. Pilgrim is misunderstood.”

“No general crap, please.”

“Mr. Pilgrim is really strong physically.”

“Yes, you could say that.”

Graham looked at the clock. A minute and a half. Crawford nodded encouragement.

“Mr. Pilgrim is white and about, say, five-feet-eleven. You haven’t told me anything, you know. I’m not so sure you even know him at all.”

“Want to stop talking?”

“No, but you said we’d trade. I was just going along with you.”

“Do you think Mr. Pilgrim is crazy?”

Bloom was shaking his head.

“I don’t think anybody who is as careful as he is could be crazy. I think he’s different. I think a lot of people do believe he’s crazy, and the reason for that is, he hasn’t let people understand much about him.”

“Describe exactly what you think he did to Mrs. Leeds and maybe I’ll tell you if you’re right or not.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Good-bye.”

Graham’s heart jumped, but he could still hear breathing on the other end.

“I can’t go into that until I know—”

Graham heard the telephone-booth door slam open in Chicago and the receiver fall with a clang. Faint voices and bangs as the receiver swung on its cord. Everyone in the office heard it on the speakerphone.