Page 36

It was a hard enough climb for Graham. He stuck a twig into the opening of the soft-drink can, gently lifted it from the crotch of the tree, and descended, holding the twig in his teeth when he had to use both hands.

Back at the housing project, Graham found that someone had written “Levon is a doo-doo head” in the dust on the side of his car. The height of the writing indicated that even the youngest residents were well along in literacy.

He wondered if they had written on the Tooth Fairy’s car.

Graham sat for a few minutes looking up at the rows of windows. There appeared to be about a hundred units. It was possible that someone might remember a white stranger in the parking lot late at night. Even though a month had passed, it was well worth trying. To ask every resident, and get it done quickly, he would need the help of the Birmingham police.

He fought the temptation to send the drink can straight to Jimmy Price in Washington. He had to ask the Birmingham police for manpower. It would be better to give them what he had. Dusting the can would be a straightforward job. Trying for fingerprints etched by acid sweat was another matter. Price could still do it after Birmingham dusted, as long as the can wasn’t handled with bare fingers. Better give it to the police. He knew the FBI document section would fall on the carving like a rabid mongoose. Pictures of that for everybody, nothing lost there.

He called Birmingham Homicide from the Jacobi house. The detectives arrived just as the Realtor, Geehan, was ushering in his prospective buyers.

11

Eileen was reading a National Tattler article called “Filth in Your Bread!” when Dolarhyde came into the cafeteria. She had eaten only the filling in her tuna-salad sandwich.

Behind the red goggles Dolarhyde’s eyes zigged down the front page of the Tattler. Cover lines in addition to “Filth in Your Bread!” included “Elvis at Secret Love Retreat—Exclusive Pix!!” “Stunning Breakthrough for Cancer Victims!” and the big banner line “Hannibal the Cannibal Helps Lawmen—Cops Consult Fiend in ‘Tooth Fairy’ Murders.”

He stood at the window absently stirring his coffee until he heard Eileen get up. She dumped her tray in the trash container and was about to throw in the Tattler when Dolarhyde touched her shoulder.

“May I have that paper, Eileen?”

“Sure, Mr. D. I just get it for the horoscopes.”

Dolarhyde read it in his office with the door closed.

Freddy Lounds had two bylines in the same double-page center spread. The main story was a breathless reconstruction of the Jacobi and Leeds murders. Since the police had not divulged many of the specifics, Lounds consulted his imagination for lurid details.

Dolarhyde found them banal.

The sidebar was more interesting:

INSANE FIEND CONSULTED IN MASS MURDERS

BY COP HE TRIED TO KILL

by Freddy Lounds

Baltimore, MD.—Federal manhunters, stymied in their search for the “Tooth Fairy,” psychopathic slayer of entire families in Birmingham and Atlanta, have turned to the most savage killer in captivity for help.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whose unspeakable practices were reported in these pages three years ago, was consulted this week in his maximum-security-asylum cell by ace investigator William (Will) Graham.

Graham suffered a near-fatal slashing at Lecter’s hands when he unmasked the mass murderer.

He was brought back from early retirement to spearhead the hunt for the “Tooth Fairy.”

What went on in this bizarre meeting of two mortal enemies? What was Graham after?

“It takes one to catch one,” a high federal official told this reporter. He was referring to Lecter, known as “Hannibal the Cannibal,” who is both a psychiatrist and a mass murderer.

OR WAS HE REFERRING TO GRAHAM???

The Tattler has learned that Graham, former instructor in forensics at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., was once confined to a mental institution for a period of four weeks. . . .

Federal officials refused to say why they placed a man with a history of mental instability at the forefront of a desperate manhunt.

The nature of Graham’s mental problem was not revealed, but one former psychiatric worker called it “deep depression.”

Garmon Evans, a paraprofessional formerly employed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, said Graham was admitted to the psychiatric wing soon after he killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the “Minnesota Shrike.” Graham shot Hobbs to death in 1975, ending Hobbs’s eight-month reign of terror in Minneapolis.