Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven

The sides of the runway blurred and receded gradually.To the east, a ray of morning sun shone across the Chesapeake Bay.The small plane flew away from the vehicles and pedestrians and disappeared. Clarice Starling could see the school down there and the Marine Corps base around Quintico.Soldiers were having assault lessons, and there were little figures crawling and running. This is how it looks from above. Once, after night shooting training, she was walking along the deserted Hogan Trail in the dark—she wanted to walk and think, when suddenly, she heard the roar of a plane overhead, and then there was no sound again, and There were voices yelling above in the black sky—the airborne troops doing night jumps, soldiers yelling to each other as they jumped through the darkness.She was thinking about what it would be like to wait for the skydiving light to light up at the gate of the plane, and what it would be like to jump forward and roar into the darkness.

Maybe that's how it feels. She opened the file. For all they knew, he'd done it five times, and that was Bill.At least five times, probably more.For ten months, he first kidnapped the woman, then killed her and skinned her. (Starling quickly scrolls down to the autopsy report, and to those monomeric histamine tests to confirm that he killed them before doing anything else.) Every time he finished, he threw the body into the running water.Each body was found in a different river, thrown downstream from an interstate intersection, and each time in a different state.Everyone knew that Buffalo Bill was a wandering man; that was all the police knew about him, absolutely, except that he had at least one pistol.The gun had 6 male grooves and 6 grooves, wound to the left - probably a Colt revolver or a Colt imitation.Judging from the scratches on the retrieved bullets, it shows that he prefers to shoot the special 0.38 bullets, and the longer chamber is the 0-357 type.

There were no fingerprints left in the river, no evidence of hair or muscle fibers. He is almost certainly a white male: white because serial killers usually kill within their own race and all their victims are white; male because female serial killers are almost unheard of in our day . Two big-city columnists found a title in Cummings' damning little poem "Buffalo Bill": ... Do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death? Someone, probably Crawford, stuck the quote on the back of the case file cover. There is no apparent connection between where Bill abducts the young women and where he dumps them.

In some cases, when the bodies were found in time and the police were able to pinpoint the time of death, the police learned another thing the killer had done: Bill was going to keep them alive for a while.The victims didn't die until a week to ten days after they were kidnapped, which meant he had to have a place to keep them, a place to work in secret.This also means that he is not a vagabond, but more like a trapdoor spider - a nest in the soil, living in a hole with a cover that can be opened and closed.He has his own nest.somewhere. This terrified the public more than anything else--detaining them for a week or more knowing they were going to be killed first.

Two were hanged and three were shot.There was no evidence that they had been raped or physically injured before their deaths, and the autopsy report did not record any evidence of "specific genital organ" damage, although the pathologist emphasized that if the body was more decomposed, such a thing is almost impossible. Impossible to be sure. All victims were found naked.In two of the cases, several pieces of clothing they were wearing outside were found on the side of the road near the victim's home, with a tear in the back from bottom to top, like mourning clothes. Starling actually went through all the photos.From a physical point of view, floating corpses are the worst kind of dead people to deal with.These dead were indeed worthy of pity, as is often the case with those murdered in the open air.The victim is insulted, weathered, and the world looks at you with indifference. If your job allows you to be angry, you will be angry.

Indoor homicides often have situations where someone who has witnessed some nasty behavior by the individual victim, or who has done harm to someone himself—spouse beating, child abuse—gets together and talks privately. Li said that the end was brought about by the ghost himself.Many times it is really self. But no one here asked for it.They lay skinless on the rubbish-strewn riverbank, surrounded by the usual filth of engine oil bottles and sandwich bags.When the weather is cold, most of the corpses still have their faces preserved.Their teeth weren't painfully exposed, Starling reminded herself, the look reminded her of turtles and fish eating.Bill just skinned the torso and mostly discarded the limbs.

Starling thought, looking at these things is not so troublesome, but the cabin is so hot, and the two propellers are spinning in the air, one is good and the other is faint: the damn plane is yaw, which is shocking!The windows are covered with calligraphy and paintings, which are spotted by the goddamn sun, making people feel like they have a headache. It is possible to catch him.Starling clung to the idea so tightly that she could sit in the cabin that seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, despite having dire information on her lap.She was able to help kill him, and then they could put the slightly sticky, glossy file back in the drawer, and the key would turn and the lock would close.

She stared at the back of Crawford's head.If she wanted to take down Buffalo Bill, she'd found the right partner.Crawford had successfully organized the hunt for three serial killers.But not without casualties.Will Graham, once the quickest hound of Crawford's gang, was a legend in the academy; but now, they say, he too is a drunk in Florida with no face. Have the heart to see. Crawford might have sensed her staring at the back of his head.He climbed out of the passenger seat.The driver held down the balance wheel so that Crawford would come back and buckle up next to her.When he put away his dark glasses and put on his bifocals, she thought she knew him again.

He looked at her face, looked at the report, looked back at the face again; something passed through his mind for a moment, but was quickly gone.Crawford's face was blank, or it would have shown regret. "I'm hot, are you hot?" he said. "Bobby, it's fucking hot in here!" he called to the driver.Bobby adjusted something and the cold air came in.A few flakes of snow condensed in the humid air in the cockpit and fell on Starling's hair. Then came Jack Crawford in search, his eyes like a clear winter's day. He opened the case file and turned to a map of the Mideastern United States.The places where the bodies were found were marked on the map—a few dots scattered silently across it, curved like a constellation of Orion.

Crawford fished a pen from his pocket and made a note of the latest location.That's what they're aiming for. Elk River, about six miles below U.S. Route 79.He said, "We got lucky with this one, the body got caught on a trolling line - a fishing line was put in the river. They don't think she's been in the water that long and are getting her to Porter I'm going to the county seat. I want to know who she is quickly, so that we can quickly find the witnesses of the kidnapping. As soon as we get the fingerprints, we will send them back through the land line immediately." Crawford tilted his head from the lower part of the glasses Just look at Starling. "Jimmy Price said you could fingerprint the floating corpse."

"Actually, I've never had a whole floating body," Starling said. "Mr. Price gets mail every day with hands in it, and I just take fingerprints from those hands. But a lot of them are The hand on the floating corpse." Those who never worked under Jimmy Price thought he was a likable cheapskate.Like most misers, he's really a mean old man.Jimmy Price was an instructor in the latent fingerprinting department of the Washington Laboratory, and Starling had studied with him as if he had served a prison sentence during his graduate school in forensic science. "That Jimmy!" said Crawford lovingly, "what do they call that job . . . what?" "People who do that work are called 'Unlucky Labs,' and some prefer 'Igor'—that's what's printed on the rubber apron they send you." "correct." "They tell you to pretend you're dissecting a frog." "I see--" "Then they get you a package from the American Postal Service. Everybody's watching—some of them get a cup of coffee and hurry back, hoping you'll vomit. Finger prints from floating corpses. I can do a good job. In fact—" "Okay. Now watch this. As far as we know, his first victim was found last June in the Blackwater River in Missouri, outside the town of Lorne Jack. The White Mel girl was reportedly two months old." Missing in Belvedere, Ohio, the previous April 15th. We can't tell much about the case—it took us another three months just to identify her. The second he took was In Chicago, in the third week of April, she was found in the Wabash River in downtown Lafayette, Indiana, just ten days after she was kidnapped, so we know what happened to her. Our next A white female, in her early twenties, was dumped in the Rolling Fork River near Highway 1-65, about thirty-eight miles south of Louisville, Kentucky. She has never been identified. And this Watt Nar woman, kidnapped in Evansville, Indiana, dumped in the Imbaras River below Interstate 70 in Eastern Illinois." "Then he moved south and dumped one in the Cornasaug River below Damascus, Georgia, up Interstate 75. That's this Kitteridge girl from Pittsburgh—it's Her graduation picture. He was infuriatingly lucky—his hijacking was never seen! We didn't find any consistent means except that the bodies were scattered near the interstate." "If you search backwards from the dumping point along the most congested traffic routes, do these routes converge in one place in the end?" "No." "What if you... suppose... he was dumped and kidnapped on the same trip?" Starling asked, careful to avoid the forbidden word "guess." "He'd throw the body away so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to tie another up, wouldn't he? Then, if he was caught at the time of the kidnapping, he'd probably get away with raping; if he was in the car Without a corpse, he can still defend himself until he has nothing to do. So you see, how about searching backwards from the previous corpse dumping point to the next corpse dumping point? Try this method Pass." "The idea is good, but his idea is not bad. If he is really doing two things at the same time in one trip, then the route he took must be a detour. We have done computer simulation experiments, first Let's say he goes west on the interstate, then east, and then all the possible combinations, putting in the best dates we can think of for his dispossession and abduction. Input into the computer and it comes out a mess! Said he lived in the East, said He is not like the moon, which has a monthly cycle, and the dates of the town's meetings have no connection with each other. Nothing useful, substantial.No, he's seen us coming, Starling. " "You think he's too smart to commit suicide." Crawford nodded. "Absolutely brilliant! He's now figured out how to make things look connected, and he wants to go big. I don't expect him to kill himself." Crawford poured a glass of water from the water bottle to the driver, poured a glass for Starling, and mixed a Volcar Celts himself. As the plane descended, she felt her stomach lift. "A couple of things to mention, Starling. I'm counting on your first-rate forensic knowledge, but I need more than that. You don't talk much, and that's okay; I don't talk too much. But never think There's a new fact that has to be reported to me. Don't ask any silly questions. There are things you see that I don't, and I want to know what they are. Maybe you have a gift for this, and we suddenly If you get this opportunity, you can see if you have such talent." As she listened to him, she felt her stomach lift up, and her expression was full of concentration.Starling wondered how long Crawford had known she was going to be used on this case, and how he had longed for a chance to give her.He is the leader, and it is a set of frank and blunt big words like a leader, that's right. "You've thought enough about him, and you know where he's been, and you've got a feel for him," Crawford went on, "and you didn't even hate them all the time, It's unbelievable though. Well, if you're lucky, some part of what you know will try to get your attention. Tell me, Starling." "Listen to me, criminal activity is disturbing enough without an official investigation. Don't let a bunch of cops confuse you. Be sure to use your own eyes. Listen to yourself. Get this one out now. Keep the crime separate from the activity around you. Don't try to impose any pattern or balance on this kid. Keep your eyes open and let him expose." "Another thing: An investigation like this is like a zoo, with lots of precincts and some of them run by slobs out there. We gotta get on with them so they don't get in the way. We're going to Porter City, West Virginia. . I don’t know the people we’re going to meet, maybe they’re nice, maybe they think we’re tax officials.” The pilot lifted the headset from his head, turned around and said, "Final approach and landing, Jack. Are you going to stay behind there?" "Yes," said Crawford. "Class is over, Starling."