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  “What about the locals? They don’t have to cooperate. They won’t wait.”

  “We’re blanketing the chiefs of police and sheriffs’ departments. Every one of them. We’re asking orders to be posted on the dispatchers’ consoles and the duty officers’ desks.”

  Graham shook his head. “Balls. They’d never hold off. They couldn’t.”

  “This iswhat we’re asking—it’s not so much. We’re asking that when a report comes in, the first officers at the scene go in and look. Medical personnel go in and make sure nobody’s left alive. They come back out. Roadblocks, interrogations, go on any way they like, but the scene , that’s sealed off until we get there. We drive up, you go in. You’re wired. You talk it out to us when you feel like it, don’t say anything when you don’t feel like it. Take as long as you want. Then we’ll come in.”

  “The locals won’t wait.”

  “Of course they won’t. They’ll send in some guys from Homicide. But the request will have some effect. It’ll cut down on traffic in there, and you’ll get it fresh.”

  Fresh. Graham tilted his head back against his chair and stared at the ceiling.

  “Of course,” Crawford said, “we’ve still got thirteen days before that weekend.”

  “Aw, Jack.”

  “‘Jack’ what?” Crawford said.

  “You kill me, you really do.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Yes you do. What you’ve done, you’ve decided to use me for bait because you don’t have anything else. So before you pop the question, you pump me up about how bad next time will be. Not bad psychology. To use on a fucking idiot. What did you think I’d say? You worried I don’t have the onions for it since that with Lecter?”

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for wondering. We both know people it happened to. I don’t like walking around in a Kevlar vest with my butt puckered up. But hell, I’m in it now. We can’t go home as long as he’s loose.”

  “I never doubted you’d do it.”

  Graham saw that this was true. “It’s something more then, isn’t it?”

  Crawford said nothing.

  “No Molly. No way .”

  “Jesus, Will, even I wouldn’t ask you that.”

  Graham stared at him for a moment. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jack. You’ve decided to play ball with Freddy Lounds, haven’t you? You and little Freddy have cut a deal.”

  Crawford frowned at a spot on his tie. He looked up at Graham. “You know yourself it’s the best way to bait him. The Tooth Fairy’s gonna watch the Tattler . What else have we got?”

  “It has to be Lounds doing it?”

  “He’s got the corner on the Tattler.”

  “So I really bad-mouth the Tooth Fairy in the Tattler and then we give him a shot. You think it’s better than the mail drop? Don’t answer that, I know it is. Have you talked to Bloom about it?”

  “Just in passing. We’ll both get together with him. And Lounds. We’ll run the mail drop on him at the same time.”

  “What about the setup? I think we’ll have to give him a pretty good shot at it. Something open. Someplace where he can get close. I don’t think he’d snipe. He might fool me, but I can’t see him with a rifle.”

  “We’ll have stillwatches on the high places.”

  They were both thinking the same thing. Kevlar body armor would stop the Tooth Fairy’s nine-millimeter and his knife unless Graham got hit in the face. There was no way to protect him against a head shot if a hidden rifleman got the chance to fire.

  “You talk to Lounds. I don’t have to do that.”

  “He needs to interview you, Will,” Crawford said gently. “He has to take your picture.”

  Bloom had warned Crawford he’d have trouble on that point.

  Chapter 18

  When the time came, Graham surprised both Crawford and Bloom. He seemed willing to meet Lounds halfway and his expression was affable beneath the cold blue eyes.

  Being inside FBI headquarters had a salutary effect on Lounds’s manners. He was polite when he remembered to be, and he was quick and quiet with his equipment.

  Graham balked only once: he flatly refused to let Lounds see Mrs. Leeds’s diary or any of the families’ private correspondence.

  When the interview began, he answered Lounds’s questions in a civil tone. Both men consulted notes taken in conference with Dr. Bloom. The questions and answers were often rephrased.

  * * *

  Alan Bloom had found it difficult to scheme toward hurt. In the end, he simply laid out his theories about the Tooth Fairy. The others listened like karate students at an anatomy lecture.

  Dr. Bloom said the Tooth Fairy’s acts and his letter indicated a projective delusional scheme which compensated for intolerable feelings of inadequacy. Smashing the mirrors tied these feelings to his appearance.

  The killer’s objection to the name “Tooth Fairy” was grounded in the homosexual implications of the word “fairy.” Bloom believed he had an unconscious homosexual conflict, a terrible fear of being gay. Dr. Bloom’s opinion was reinforced by one curious observation at theLeedshouse: fold marks and covered bloodstains indicated the Tooth Fairy put a pair of shorts on Charles Leeds after he was dead.

  Dr. Bloom believed he did this to emphasize his lack of interest inLeeds.

  The psychiatrist talked about the strong bonding of aggressive and sexual drives that occurs in sadists at a very early age.

  The savage attacks aimed primarily at the women and performed in the presence of their families were clearly strikes at a maternal figure. Bloom, pacing, talking half to himself, called his subject “the child of a nightmare.” Crawford’s eyelids drooped at the compassion in his voice.

  * * *

  In the interview with Lounds, Graham made statements no investigator would make and no straight newspaper would credit.

  He speculated that the Tooth Fairy was ugly, impotent with persons of the opposite sex, and he claimed falsely that the killer had sexually molested his male victims. Graham said that the Tooth Fairy doubtless was the laughingstock of his acquaintances and the product of an incestuous home.

  He emphasized that the Tooth Fairy obviously was not as intelligent as Hannibal Lecter. He promised to provide the Tattler with more observations andinsights about the killer as they occurred to him. Many law-inforcement people disagreed with him, he said, but as long as he was heading the investigation, the Tattler could count on getting the straight stuff from him.

  Lounds took a lot of pictures.

  The key shot was taken in Graham’s “Washingtonhideaway,” an apartment he had “borrowed to use until he squashed the Fairy.” It was the only place where he could “find solitude” in the “carnival atmosphere” of the investigation.

  The photograph showed Graham in a bathrobe at a desk, studying late into the night. He was poring over a grotesque “artist’s conception” of “the Fairy.”

  Behind him a slice of the floodlit Capitol dome could be seen through the window. Most importantly, in the lower-left corner of the window, blurred but readable, was the sign of a popular motel across the street.

  The Tooth Fairy could find the apartment if he wanted to.

  At FBI headquarters, Graham was photographed in front of a mass spectrometer. It had nothing to do with the case, but Lounds thought it looked impressive.

  Graham even consented to have his picture taken with Lounds interviewing him. They did it in front of the vast gun racks in Firearms and Toolmarks. Lounds held a nine-millimeter automatic of the same type as the Tooth Fairy’s weapon. Graham pointed to the homemade silencer, fashioned from a length of television-antenna mast.

  Dr. Bloom was surprised to see Graham put a comradely hand on Lounds’s shoulder just before Crawford clicked the shutter.

  The interview and pictureswere set to appear in the Tattler published the next day, Monday, August 11. As soon as he had the material, Lounds left forChicago. He said he wanted to supervise
the layout himself. He made arrangements to meet Crawford on Tuesday afternoon five blocksfrom the trap.

  Starting Tuesday, when the Tattler became generally available, two traps would be baited for the monster.

  Graham would go each evening to his “temporary residence” shown in the Tattler picture.

  A coded personal notice in the same issue invited the Tooth Fairy to a mail drop inAnnapoliswatched around the clock. If he were suspicious of the mail drop, he might think the effort to catch him was concentrated there. Then Graham would be a more appealling target, the FBI reasoned.

  Floridaauthorities provided a stillwatch at Sugarloaf Key.

  There was an air of dissatisfaction among the hunters—two major stakeouts took manpower that could be used elsewhere, and Graham’s presence at the trap each night would limit his movement to theWashingtonarea.

  Though Crawford’s judgment told him this was the best move, the whole procedure was too passive for his taste. He felt they were playing games with themselves in the dark of the moon with less than two weeks to go before it rose full again.

  Sunday and Monday passed in curiously jerky time. The minutes dragged and the hours flew.

  * * *

  Spurgen, chief SWAT instructor atQuantico, circled the apartment block on Monday afternoon. Graham rode beside him. Crawford was in the back seat.

  “The pedestrian traffic falls off around seven-fifteen. Everybody’s settled in for dinner,” Spurgen said. With his wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on his head, he looked like an infielder. “Give us a toot on the clear band tomorrow night when you cross the B&O railroad tracks. You ought to try to make it about eight-thirty, eight-forty or so.”

  He pulled into the apartment parking lot. “This setup ain’t heaven, but it could be worse. You’ll park here tomorrow night. We’ll change the space you use every night after that, but it’ll always be on this side. It’s seventy-five yards to the apartment entrance. Let’s walk it.”

  Spurgen, short and bandy-legged, went ahead of Graham and Crawford.

  He’s looking for places where he could get the bad hop, Graham thought.

  “The walk is probably where it’ll happen, if it happens,” the SWAT leader said. “See, from here the direct line from your car to the entrance, the natural route, is across the center of the lot. It’s as far as you can get from the line of cars that are here all day. He’ll have to come across open asphalt to get close. How well do you hear?”

  “Pretty well,” Graham said. “Damn well on this parking lot.”

  Spurgen looked for something in Graham’s face, found nothing he could recognize.

  He stopped in the middle of the lot. “We’re reducing the wattage on these streetlights a little to make it tougher on a rifleman.”

  “Tougher on your people too,” Crawford said.

  “Two of ours have Startron night scopes,” Spurgen said. “I’ve got some clear spray I’ll ask you to use on your suit jackets, Will. By the way, I don’t care how hot it is, you will wear body armor each and every time. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Kevlar—what, Jack?—Second Chance?”

  “Second Chance,” Crawford said.

  “It’s pretty likely he’ll come up to you, probably from behind, or he may figure on meeting you and then turning around to shoot when he’s passed you,” Spurgen said. “Seven times he’s gone for the head shot, right? He’s seen that work. He’ll do it with you too if you give him the time. Don’t give him the time. After I show you a couple of things in the lobby and the flop, let’s go to the range. Can you do that?”

  “He can do that,” Crawford said.

  Spurgen was high priest on the range. He made Graham wear earplugs under the earmuffs and flashed targets at him from every angle. He was relieved to see that Graham did not carry the regulation .38, but he worried about the flash from the ported barrel. They worked for two hours. The man insisted on checking the cylinder crane and cylinder latch screws on Graham’s .44 when he had finished firing.

  Graham showered and changed clothes to get the smell of gun-smoke off him before he drove to the bay for his last free night with Molly and Willy.

  He took his wife and stepson to the grocery store after dinner and made a considerable to-do over selecting melons. He made sure they bought plenty of groceries—the old Tattler was still on the racks beside the checkout stands and he hoped Molly would not see the new issue coming in the morning. He didn’t want to tell herwhat was happening.

  When she asked him what he wanted for dinner in the coming week, he had to say he’d be away, that he was going back toBirmingham. It was the first real lie he had ever told her and telling it made him feel as greasy as old currency.

  He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical checkups for him and Willy, her controlled fear of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.

  Pachelbel’s Canon filled the sun-drowned room where thev learned each other and there was the exhilaration too big to hold and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey’s shadow: this is too good to live for long.

  Molly switched her bag often from shoulder to shoulder in the grocery aisles, as though the gun in it weighed much more than its nineteen ounces.

  Graham would have been offended had he heard the ugly thing he mumbled to the melons: “I have to put that bastard in a rubber sack, that’s all. I have to do that.”

  Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop.

  Molly smelled a rat. She and Graham did not speak after the lights were out. Molly dreamed of heavy crazy footsteps coming in a house of changing rooms.

  Chapter 19

  There is a newsstand inLambertSt. LouisInternationalAirportwhich carries many of the major daily newspapers from all over theUnited States. TheNew York,Washington,Chicago, andLos Angelespapers come in by air freight and you can buy them on the same day they are published.

  Like many newsstands, this one is owned by a chain and, along with the standard magazines and papers, the operator is required to take a certain amount of trash.

  When theChicago Tribune was delivered to the stand at ten o’clock on Monday night, a bundle of Tattlers thumped to the floor beside it. The bundle was still warm inthe center.

  The newsstand operator squatted in front of his shelves arranging the Tribunes . He had enough else to do. The day guys never did their share of straightening.

  A pair of black zippered boots came into the corner of his vision. A browser. No, theboots were pointed at him. Somebody wanted some damn thing. The newsie wanted to finish arranging his Tribunes but the insistent attention made the back of his head prickle.

  His trade was transient. He didn’t have to be nice. “What is it?” he said to the knees.

  “A Tattler.”

  “You’ll have to wait until I bust the bundle.”

  The boots did not go away. They were too close.

  “I said you’ll have to wait until I bust the bundle. Understand? See I’m working here?”

  A hand and a flash of bright steel and the twine on the bundle beside him parted with a pop. A Susan B. Anthony dollar rang on the floor in front of him. A clean copy of the Tattler , jerked from the center of the bundle, spilled the top ones to the floor.

  The newsstand operator got to his feet. His cheeks were flushed. The man was leaving with the paper under his arm.

  “Hey. Hey, you.”

  The man turned to face him. “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. I told you—”

  “You told me what?” He was coming back. He stood too close. “You told me what?”

  Usually a rude merchant can fluster his customers. There was something awful in this one’s calm.

  The n
ewsie looked at the floor. “You got a quarter coming back.” Dolarhyde turned his back and walked out. The newsstand operator’s cheeks burned for half an hour. Yeah, that guy was in here last week too. He comes in here again, I’ll tell him where to fuckin’ get off. I got somethin’ under the counter for wise-asses.

  Dolarhyde did not look at the Tattler in the airport. Last Thursday’s message from Lecter had left him with mixed feelings. Dr. Lecter had been right, of course, in saying that he was beautiful and it was thrilling to read. He was beautiful. He felt some contempt for the doctor’s fear of the policeman. Lecter did not understand much better than the public.

  Still, he was on fire to know if Lecter had sent him another message. He would wait until he got home to look. Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control.

  He mused about the newsstand operator as he drove.

  There was a time when he would have apologized for disturbing the man and never come back to the newsstand. For years he had taken shit unlimited from people. Not anymore. The man could have insulted Francis Dolarhyde: he could not face the Dragon. It was all part of Becoming.

  * * *

  At midnight, the light above his desk still burned. The message from the Tattler was decoded and wadded on the floor. Pieces of the Tattler were scattered where Dolarhyde had clipped it for his journal. The great journal stood open beneath the painting of the Dragon, glue still drying where the new clippingswere fastened. Beneath them, freshly attached, was a small plastic bag, empty as yet.

  The legend beside the bag said: “With These He Offended Me.”

  But Dolarhyde had left his desk.

  He was sitting on the basement stairs in the cool must of earth and mildew. The beam from his electric lantern moved over draped furniture, the dusty backs of the great mirrors that once hung in the house and now leaned against the walls, the trunk containing his case of dynamite.