Chapter 9 chapter eight

The Behavioral Sciences Branch is the FBI's serial homicide division.Starling's office was on the ground floor of the building, where the air was cool and calm.Renovators have struggled in recent years to pick a color on their palette that would brighten this basement, and the results have been no more successful than a funeral home's makeup...   The director's office still maintains the original brown and brown colors, with high windows and brown lattice curtains.There Crawford sat at his desk, surrounded by paperwork. There was a knock at the door, and Crawford looked up to see someone who pleased him—Clarice Starling standing in the doorway.

Crawford smiled and got up from his chair.He and Starling would often stand up and talk, a tacit ritual they had instituted for their relationship.The two don't shake hands. "I heard you visited me in the hospital," Starling said. "I'm sorry I didn't see you." "I'm glad they let you go so soon," he said. "Tell me how your ears are. Are you all right?" "If you like broccoli, these ears are fine. They tell me the swelling will go away, mostly." Her ears were covered by her hair, and she didn't let him see. There was a brief silence.

"They want me to take responsibility for the failure of the attack, Mr. Crawford, for the death of Evelda Drumgo, all of it. They're all hyena-like, and then they stop and slip away. Well, something drove them away." "Maybe you have an angel protecting you, Starling." "Perhaps there was one, and you paid for it, Mr. Crawford?" Crawford shook his head. "Please close the door, Starling." Crawford took a small packet of Kleenex tissues from his pocket and wiped his glasses. "I'd pay the price if I could. But I don't have it myself. You might get a little protection if you're still in power. . . . They lost John Brigham for nothing on this raid—wasted that much. It would be embarrassing for them to waste you like John again. I feel like I'm pushing you and John in front of the jeep."

Crawford flushed, and Starling recalled his face in the biting wind at John Brigham's grave.Crawford never told her about his struggles over it. "You made an effort, Mr. Crawford." "I tried. I don't know if you'd like it. It took a little effort." strenuous. "Hard work" had a positive connotation in both of their private vocabularies, connoting a certain kind of direct work and clearing the air.Whenever they could, they never talked about the bureaucracy that plagued the central FBI.Crawford and Starling are like medical missionaries, bored with theology and focused only on the doll in front of them.Knowing that God has no help, but not saying a word.Even if it can save the lives of 50,000 babies, God will not send rain.

"Your indirect benefactor, Starling, is the one who wrote you recently." "Dr. Lecter." She had been aware of Crawford's aversion to the name. "Yes, that's him. He's been avoiding us for so long—sliding away without a trace, and now he's writing to you. Why?" Seven years have passed since the famous murderer Hannibal Lecter, who owed 10 lives, escaped from custody in Memphis, owing five more in the process. He seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.That case was never closed by the FBI, and it never would be closed until they caught him.The same is true in Tennessee and other jurisdictions.But no investigators were designated to pursue him.That's despite the victim's family crying angry tears at the Tennessee statehouse, demanding action.

In order to study Dr. Lecter's psychology, a large number of books have been published, most of which are psychologists who have never had direct contact with the doctor.There were also books by psychoanalysts whom Dr. Lecter had ridiculed in the professional journals.These people obviously think it's safe to show up now.It was said that his mental anomaly must have led to suicide, and that he might even have died long ago. Interest in Dr. Lecter remains strong, at least in cyberspace.Lecter theories have sprung up like mushrooms in the wet soil of the Internet.The number of people who claim to have seen the Doctor rivals those who have.Scammers thrive in the phosphorescent swamps of chat rooms and the shadows of the web.Photographs of his crimes at the police station were stolen and sold to anecdote collectors.The popularity of such things is second only to Li Fuzhou's execution.

Seven years later the Doctor resurfaced - his letter to Clarice Starling when she was crucified by the tabloids. There were no fingerprints on the letter, but the FBI had reason to believe it was genuine.Clarice Starling was sure it was genuine. "Why did he do that, Starling?" Crawford seemed on the verge of getting mad at her. "I never pretended to understand him better than these psychic fools. Show me." "He thought what happened to me was going to ... destroy me, disillusion me with the FBI; and he liked seeing disillusionment, that was his hobby. Like he liked collecting church collapses. The one in Italy The collapse happened during a special mass, and a lot of bricks fell on the old ladies; someone also planted a Christmas tree on top of the broken bricks. He likes that. He thinks I am funny, and teases me . When I interviewed him he liked to point out my academic flaws and think I was naive."

Crawford, looking at things through the lens of his own age and loneliness, asked, "Did it ever occur to you that he could fall in love with you, Starling?" "I think I amuse him. Things are either fun for him or not. If he's not fun..." "Did you ever feel that he loved you?" Crawford emphasized the difference between thinking and feeling, just like the same. "Indeed, he told me some things about me, very truthfully, not long after we met. I think it's easy to confuse knowledge with intimacy—we need intimacy very much. Perhaps being able to see the difference between the two is a kind of Growing up. Finding out that someone who doesn't like you at all may know you is hard, and ugly. And the worst thing is finding out that recognition is just a tool for robbery. I... I... don't know Dr. Lecter How do I feel."

"If you don't mind, can you tell me what he said to you?" "He said I was an ambitious redneck eager to climb up the ladder, and that my eyes were as bright as cheap. He told me that I wore cheap shoes, but I still had taste, a bit of taste." "Do you think that's true?" "Yes, maybe it's still true now. My shoes have improved." "Starling, do you think he might want to know if you'd turn on him if he wrote you a letter of encouragement?" "He knows I'm going to tell him. He should know." "He also killed six people after the court verdict," Crawford said. Personally. In the current political climate, the Doctor would be shot if caught." Crawford smiled at the thought.He was a pioneer in the study of serial homicide.Now he faces statutory retirement, and the devil who tested him the most is still at large.He felt very happy at the prospect of Dr. Lecter's death.

Starling knew that Crawford was bringing up the Miggs incident to irritate her, to get her attention, to remind her of the horrible days when she went to visit the cannibal Hannibal in the dungeon of Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.There was a girl huddled in Jaime Gumb's cellar waiting to die, and Lecter made fun of her.Crawford always wanted your attention before he got to the point, and he's doing it now. "Did you know, Starling, that one of Dr. Lecter's early victims is still alive?" "That rich man even offered a reward." "Yes, Mason Verger. He's still in Maryland, on a respirator. His father died this year and left him a share of his meatpacking fortune. Old Verger left Mason a U.S. Congressman, member of the House Judiciary Oversight Committee. That guy can't make ends meet without him. Mason said he got something that could help us catch Lecter. He wants to talk to you."

"With me?" "Follow you. That's Mason's idea, and everyone suddenly agrees that's a really good idea." "Is it because you suggested to Mason that he wanted to talk to me?" "They were going to sacrifice you, Starling, toss you like a rag, just to save some ATF bureaucrats. You risk being wasted like John Brigham. Threat , suppression, they only know this. I sent a letter to Mason and told him that if you were fired, it would be a great loss to the hunt for Lecter. I don’t want to know about the future situation, he is very Possibly got that Congressman Filmer." Crawford would never have done it a year ago.Starling searched his face for the madness of a man on the brink of abdication—that's what people who are about to retire sometimes do.She saw no sign of that, but he did look bored. "Mason is ugly, Starling, and I don't just mean his face. You go and find out what he got, and bring it to me. It's going to be used by us in the end." Starling knew that Crawford had been trying to get her transferred to the Behavioral Sciences Division for years, ever since she graduated from the FBI Academy. Now a veteran of the Bureau, she's a veteran of many jobs and understands that her early victories over the serial killer Jaime Gumm were part of the reason for her unhappiness.She is a newly rising star, blocking the way for others to advance.She made at least one powerful enemy in the Gumm case, and aroused the envy of several male colleagues of her generation.This, combined with her curmudgeonly temper, resulted in years of being limited to commando and bank robbery quick response teams, resulting in years of only issuing summonses, guarding Newark with a shotgun, and finally being considered temper tantrums. Too irritable to work with, and become a technical agent who only installs bugs on the phones of gangsters and juvenile pornographic criminals, or eavesdrops on the lonely night vigil next to the third type of bug.She's always on loan when a brother unit needs a reliable commando.She is athletic, agile, and careful with her guns. Crawford sees this as an opportunity for her.He thought she'd wanted to go after Lecter all along, but the truth was much more complicated. Crawford is working on her now. "The point of gunpowder on your cheek has never been removed." A few grains of gunpowder burning in the dead Jaime Gumm's pistol had left a dark spot on her cheekbone. "There's never been time," Starling said. "You know what the French call a beauty spot like yours? A dark spot on a cheekbone, do you know what that signifies?" Crawford has books on tattoos, body symbols, ritual amputations . Starling shook her head. "They call it 'courage,'" Crawford said. "You can keep that mole. I'd keep it if I were you." Notes: .