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“I need a little help with Niles Jacobi.”

“What’s he done now?”

“I think he lifted a few things out of the Jacobi house after they were killed.”

“Ummm.”

“There’s a sterling picture frame missing from your lockbox inventory. When I was in Birmingham I picked up a loose photograph of the family in Niles’s dormitory room. It used to be in a frame—I can see the impression the mat left on it.”

“The little bastard. I gave permission for him to get his clothes and some books he needed,” Metcalf said.

“Niles has expensive friendships. This is mainly what I’m after, though—a movie projector and a movie camera are missing too. I want to know if he got them. Probably he did, but if he didn’t, maybe the killer got them. In that case we need to get the serial numbers out to the hock shops. We need to put ’em on the national hot sheet. The frame’s probably melted down by now.”

“He’ll think ‘frame’ when I get through with him.”

“One thing—if Niles took the projector, he might have kept the film. He couldn’t get anything for it. I want the film. I need to see it. If you come at him from the front, he’ll deny everything and flush the film if he has any.”

“Okay,” Metcalf said. “His car title reverted to the estate. I’m executor, so I can search it without a warrant. My friend the judge won’t mind papering his room for me. I’ll call you.”

Graham went back to work.

Affluence. Put affluence in the profile the police would use.

Graham wondered if Mrs. Leeds and Mrs. Jacobi ever did their marketing in tennis clothes. That was a fashionable thing to do in some areas. It was a dumb thing to do in some areas because it was doubly provocative—arousing class resentment and lust at the same time.

Graham imagined them pushing grocery carts, short pleated skirts brushing the brown thighs, the little balls on their sweat socks winking—passing the husky man with the barracuda eyes who was buying cold lunch meat to gnaw in his car.

How many families were there with three children and a pet, and only common locks between them and the Dragon as they slept?

When Graham pictured possible victims, he saw clever, successful people in graceful houses.

But the next person to confront the Dragon did not have children or a pet, and there was no grace in his house. The next person to confront the Dragon was Francis Dolarhyde.

37

The thump of weights on the attic floor carried through the old house.

Dolarhyde was lifting, straining, pumping more weight than he had ever lifted. His costume was different; sweatpants covered his tattoo. The sweatshirt hung over The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. The kimono hung on the wall like the shed skin of a tree snake. It covered the mirror.

Dolarhyde wore no mask.

Up. Two hundred and eighty pounds from the floor to his chest in one heave. Now over his head.

“WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?”

Startled by the voice, he nearly dropped the weight, swayed beneath it. Down. The plates thudded and clanked on the floor.

He turned, his great arms hanging, and stared in the direction of the voice.

“WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?”

It seemed to come from behind the sweatshirt, but its rasp and volume hurt his throat.

“WHOM ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?”

He knew who spoke and he was frightened. From the beginning, he and the Dragon had been one. He was Becoming and the Dragon was his higher self. Their bodies, voices, wills were one.

Not now. Not since Reba. Don’t think Reba.