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He could get more flowers when he went out. Clarice Starling was not disturbed when he told her he was going. He suggested she might like to sleep.

CHAPTER

98

IN THE afternoon of the fifth day after the murders, Barney had finished shaving and was patting alcohol on his cheeks when he heard the footsteps on the stairs. It was almost time for him to go to work.

A firm knock. Margot Verger stood at his door. She carried a big purse and a small satchel.

“Hi, Barney.” She looked tired.

“Hi, Margot. Come in.”

He offered her a seat at the kitchen table. “Want a Coke?” Then he remembered that Cordell’s head was driven into a refrigerator and he regretted the offer.

“No thanks,” she said.

He sat down across the table from her. She looked over his arms as a rival bodybuilder, then back to his face.

“You okay, Margot?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Looks like you don’t have any worries, I mean from what I read.”

“Sometimes I think about the talks we had, Barney. I kind of thought I might hear from you sometime.”

He wondered if she had the hammer in the purse or the satchel.

“Only way you hear from me, maybe I’d like to see how you’re doing sometime, if that was okay. Never asking for anything. Margot, you’re cool with me.”

“It’s just, you know, you worry about loose ends. Not that I’ve got anything to hide.”

He knew then she had the semen. It was when the pregnancy was announced, if they managed one, that she’d be worried about Barney.

“I mean, it was a godsend, his death, I’m not going to lie about that.”

The speed of her talk told Barney she was building momentum.

“Maybe I would like a Coke,” she said.

“Before I get it for you, let me show you something I’ve got for you. Believe me, I can put your mind at rest and it’ll cost you nothing. Take a second. Hold on.”

He picked a screwdriver out of a canister of tools on the counter. He could do that with his side to Margot.

In the kitchen wall were what appeared to be two circuit breaker boxes. Actually one box had replaced the other in the old building, and only the one on the right was in service.

At the electrical boxes, Barney had to turn his back to Margot. Quickly he opened the one on the left. Now he could watch her in the mirror taped inside the switch box door. She put her hand inside the big purse. Put it in, didn’t take it out.

By removing four screws, he was able to lift out of the box the disconnected panel of circuit breakers. Behind the panel was the space within the hollow wall.

Reaching carefully inside, Barney removed a plastic bag.

He heard a hitch in Margot’s breathing when he took out the object the bag contained. It was a famous brutish visage—the mask Dr. Lecter had been forced to wear in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to prevent him from biting. This was the last and most valuable item in Barney’s cache of Lecter memorabilia.

“Whoa!” Margot said.

Barney placed the mask facedown on the table on a piece of waxed paper under the bright kitchen light. He knew Dr. Lecter had never been allowed to clean his mask. Dried saliva was crusted inside the mouth opening. Where the straps attached to the mask were three hairs, caught in the fastenings and pulled out by their roots.