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Bowman handed him the case as he finished.

“The Tattler comes out this evening,” Crawford said. “It’s printed in Chicago on Mondays and Thursdays. We’ll get proofs of the classified pages.”

“I’ll have some more stuff—minor, I think,” Bowman said.

“Anything useful, fire it straight to Chicago. Fill me in when I get back from the asylum,” Crawford said on his way out the door.

14

The turnstile at Washington’s Metro Central spit Graham’s fare card back to him and he came out into the hot afternoon carrying his flight bag.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building looked like a great concrete cage above the heat shimmer on Tenth Street. The FBI’s move to the new headquarters had been under way when Graham left Washington. He had never worked there.

Crawford met him at the escort desk off the underground driveway to augment Graham’s hastily issued credentials with his own. Graham looked tired and he was impatient with the signing-in. Crawford wondered how he felt, knowing that the killer was thinking about him.

Graham was issued a magnetically encoded tag like the one on Crawford’s vest. He plugged it into the gate

and passed into the long white corridors. Crawford carried his flight bag.

“I forgot to tell Sarah to send a car for you.”

“Probably quicker this way. Did you get the note back to Lecter all right?”

“Yeah,” Crawford said. “I just got back. We poured water on the hall floor. Faked a broken pipe and electrical short. We had Simmons—he’s the assistant SAC Baltimore now—we had him mopping when Lecter was brought back to his cell. Simmons thinks he bought it.”

“I kept wondering on the plane if Lecter wrote it himself.”

“That bothered me too until I looked at it. Bite mark in the paper matches the ones on the women. Also it’s ballpoint, which Lecter doesn’t have. The person who wrote it had read the Tattler, and Lecter hasn’t had a Tattler. Rankin and Willingham tossed the cell. Beautiful job, but they didn’t find diddly. They took Polaroids first to get everything back just right. Then the cleaning man went in and did what he always does.”

“So what do you think?”

“As far as physical evidence toward an ID, the note is pretty much dreck,” Crawford said. “Some way we’ve got to make the contact work for us, but damn if I know how yet. We’ll get the rest of the lab results in a few minutes.”

“You’ve got the mail and phone covered at the hospital?”

“Standing trace-and-tape order for any time Lecter’s on the phone. He made a call Saturday afternoon. He told Chilton he was calling his lawyer. It’s a damn WATS line, and I can’t be sure.”

“What did his lawyer say?”

“Nothing. We got a leased line to the hospital switchboard for Lecter’s convenience in the future, so that won’t get by us again. We’ll fiddle with his mail both ways, starting next delivery. No problem with warrants, thank God.”

Crawford bellied up to a door and stuck the tag on his vest into the lock slot. “My new office. Come on in. Decorator had some paint left over from a battleship he was doing. Here’s the note. This print is exactly the size.”

Graham read it twice. Seeing the spidery lines spell his name started a high tone ringing in his head.

“The library confirms the Tattler is the only paper that carried a story about Lecter and you,” Crawford said, fixing himself an Alka-Seltzer. “Want one of these? Good for you. It was published Monday night a week ago. It was on the stands Tuesday nationwide—some areas not till Wednesday—Alaska and Maine and places. The Tooth Fairy got one—couldn’t have done it before Tuesday. He reads it, writes to Lecter. Rankin and Willingham are still sifting the hospital trash for the envelope. Bad job. They don’t separate the papers from the diapers at Chesapeake.

“All right, Lecter gets the note from the Tooth Fairy no sooner than Wednesday. He tears out the part about how to reply and scratches over and pokes out one earlier reference—I don’t know why he didn’t tear that out too.”

“It was in the middle of a paragraph full of compliments,” Graham said. “He couldn’t stand to ruin them. That’s why he didn’t throw the whole thing away.” He rubbed his temples with his knuckles.

“Bowman thinks Lecter will use the Tattler to answer the Tooth Fairy. He says that’s probably the setup. You think he’d answer this thing?”

“Sure. He’s a great correspondent. Pen pals all over.”

“If they’re using the Tattler, Lecter would barely have time to get his answer in the issue they’ll print tonight, even if he sent it special delivery to the paper the same day he got the Tooth Fairy’s note. Chester from the Chicago office is down at the Tattler checking the ads. The printers are putting the paper together right now.”

“Please God don’t stir the Tattler up,” Graham said.