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CHAPTER

7

BUZZARD’S POINT, the FBI’s field office for Washington and the District of Columbia, is named for a gathering of vultures at a Civil War hospital on the site.

The gathering today is of middle-management officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI to discuss Clarice Starling’s fate.

Starling stood alone on the thick carpet of her boss’s office. She could hear her pulse thump beneath the bandage around her head. Over her pulse she heard the voices of the men, muffled by the frosted-glass door of an adjoining conference room.

The great seal of the FBI with its motto, “Fidelity,

Bravery, Integrity,” is rendered handsomely in gold leaf on the glass.

The voices behind the seal rose and fell with some passion; Starling could hear her name when no other word was clear.

The office has a fine view across the yacht basin to Fort McNair, where the accused Lincoln assassination conspirators were hanged.

Starling flashed on photos she had seen of Mary Surratt, walking past her own casket and mounting the gallows at Fort McNair, standing hooded on the trap, her skirts tied around her legs to prevent immodesty as she dropped through to the loud crunch and the dark.

Next door, Starling heard the chairs scrape back as the men got to their feet. They were filing into this office now. Some of the faces she recognized. Jesus, there was Noonan, the A/DIC over the whole investigation division.

And there was her nemesis, Paul Krendler from Justice, with his long neck and his round ears set high on his head like the ears of a hyena. Krendler was a climber, the gray eminence at the shoulder of the Inspector General. Since she caught the serial killer Buffalo Bill ahead of him in a celebrated case seven years ago, he had dripped poison into her personnel file at every opportunity, and whispered close to the ears of the Career Board.

None of these men had ever been on the line with her, served a warrant with her, been shot at with her or combed the glass splinters out of their hair with her.

The men did not look at her until they all looked at once, the way a sidling pack turns its attention suddenly on the cripple in the herd.

“Have a chair, Agent Starling.” Her boss, Special Agent Clint Pearsall, rubbed his thick wrist as though his watch hurt him.

Without meeting her eyes, he gestured toward an armchair facing the windows. The chair in an interrogation is not the place of honor.

The seven men remained standing, their silhouettes black against the bright windows. Starling could not see their faces now, but below the glare, she could see their legs and feet. Five were wearing the thick-soled tasseled loafers favored by country slicksters who have made it to Washington. A pair of Thom McAn wing tips with Corfam soles and some Florsheim wing tips rounded out the seven. A smell in the air of shoe polish warmed by hot feet.

“In case you don’t know everybody, Agent Starling, this is Assistant Director Noonan, I’m sure you know who he is; this is John Eldredge from DEA, Bob Sneed, BATF, Benny Holcomb is assistant to the mayor and Larkin Wainwright is an examiner from our Office of Professional Responsibility,” Pearsall said. “Paul Krendler—you know Paul—came over unofficially from the Inspector General’s Office at Justice. Paul’s here as a favor to us, he’s here and he’s not here, just to help us head off trouble, if you follow me.”

Starling knew what the saying was in the service: a federal examiner is someone who arrives at the battlefield after the battle is over and bayonets the wounded.

The heads of some of the silhouettes bobbed in greeting. The men craned their necks and considered the young woman they were gathered over. For a few beats, nobody spoke.

Bob Sneed broke the silence. Starling remembered him as the BATF spin doctor who tried to deodorize the Branch Davidian disaster at Waco. He was a crony of Krendler’s and considered a climber.

“Agent Starling, you’ve seen the coverage in the papers and on television, you’ve been widely identified as the shooter in the death of Evelda Drumgo. Unfortunately, you’ve been sort of demonized.”

Starling did not reply.

“Agent Starling?”

“I have nothing to do with the news, Mr. Sneed.”

“The woman had the baby in her arms, you can see the problem that creates.”

“Not in her arms, in a sling across her chest and her arms and hands were beneath it, under a blanket, where she had her MAC 10.”

“Have you seen the autopsy protocol?” Sneed asked.

“No.”

“But you’ve never denied being the shooter.”