A "loose cannon" over the side would "stop rocking the boat," he thought, pleased and comforted as though two naval metaphors made a logical equation. That the rocking boat moves the cannon bothered him not at all. Krendler had the most active fantasy life his imagination would permit. Now, for his pleasure, he pictured
Starling as old, tripping over those tits, those trim legs turned blue-veined and lumpy, trudging up and down the stairs carrying laundry, turning her face away from the stains on the sheets, working for her board at a bed-and- breakfast owned by a couple of goddamned hairy old dykes.
He imagined the next thing he would say to her, coming on the heels of his triumph with "cornpone country pussy.".Armed with Dr Doemling's insights, he wanted to stand close to her after she was disarmed and say without moving his mouth, "You're old to still be fucking your daddy, even for Southern white trash." He repeated the line in his mind, and considered putting it in his notebook.
Krendler had the tool and the time and the venom he needed to smash Starling's career, and as he set about it, he was vastly aided by chance and the Italian mail.
Chapter 68
THE BATTLE Creek Cemetery outside Hubbard, Texas, is a small scar on the lion- colored hide of central Texas in December. The wind is whistling there at this moment, and it will always whistle there. You cannot wait it out.
The new section of the cemetery has flat markers so it's easy to mow the grass. Today a silver heart balloon dances there over the grave of a birthday girl. In the older part of the cemetery they mow along the paths every time and get between the tombstones with a mower as often as they can. Bits of ribbon, the stalks of dried flowers, are mixed in the soil. At the very back of the cemetery is a compost heap where the old flowers go. Between the dancing heart balloon and the compost heap, a backhoe is idling, a young black man at the controls, another on the ground, cupping a match against the wind as he lights a cigarette…
"Mr. Closter, I wanted you to be here when we did this so you could see what we're up against. I'm sure you will discourage the loved ones from any viewing," said Mr. Greenlea, director of the Hubbard Funeral Home. "That casket – and I want to compliment you again on your taste – that casket will make a proud presentation, and that's as far as they need to see. I'm happy to give you the professional discount on it. My own father, who is dead at the present time, rests in one just like it."
He nodded to the backhoe operator and the machine's claw took a bite out of the weedy, sunken grave.
"You're positive about the stone, Mr. Closter?"
"Yes," Dr Lecter said. "The children are having one stone made for both the mother and the father."
They stood without talking, the wind snapping their trouser cuffs, until the backhoe stopped about two feet down.
"We'd better go with shovels from here," Mr. Greenlea said. The two workers dropped into the hole and started moving dirt with an easy, practiced swing.
"Careful," Mr. Greenlea said. "That wasn't much of a coffin to start with. Nothing like what he's getting now."
The cheap pressboard coffin had indeed collapsed on its occupant. Greenlea had his diggers clear the dirt around it and slide a canvas under the bottom of the box, which was still intact. The coffin was raised in this canvas sling and swung into the back of a truck.
On a trestle table in the Hubbard Funeral Home garage, the pieces of the sunken lid were lifted away to reveal a sizeable skeleton.
Dr Lecter examined it quickly. A bullet had notched the short rib over the liver and there was a depressed fracture and bullet hole high on the left.forehead. The skull, mossy and clogged and only partly exposed, had good, high cheekbones he had seen before.
"The ground don't leave much," Mr. Greenlea said.
The rotted remains of trousers and the rags of a cowboy shirt draped the bones. The pearl snaps from the shirt had fallen through the ribs. A cowboy hat, a triple-X beaver with a Fort Worth crease, rested over the chest. There was a notch in the brim and a hole in the crown.
"Did you know the deceased?" Dr Lecter asked.
"We just bought this mortuary and took over this cemetery as an addition to our group in 1989," Mr. Greenlea said. "I live locally now, but our firm's headquarters is in St Louis. Do you want to try to preserve the clothing? Or I could let you have a suit, but I don't think"
"No," Dr Lecter said. "Brush the bones, no clothing except the hat and the buckle and the boots, bag the small bones of the hands and feet, and bundle them in your best silk shroud with the skull and the long bones. You don't have to lay them out, just get them all. Will keeping the stone compensate you for reclosing?"
"Yes, if you'll just sign here, and I'll give you copies of those others," Mr. Greenlea said, vastly pleased at the coffin he had sold. Most funeral directors coming for a body would have shipped the bones in a carton and sold the family a coffin of his own.
Dr Lecter's disinterment papers were in perfect accord with the Texas Health and Safety Code Sec. 711.004 as he knew they would be, having made them himself, downloading the requirements and facsimile forms from the Texas Association of Counties Quick Reference Law Library.
The two workmen, grateful for the power tailgate on Dr Letter's rental truck, rolled the new coffin into place and lashed it down on its dolly beside the only other item in the truck, a cardboard hanging wardrobe.
"That's such a good idea, carrying your own closet. Saves wrinkling your ceremonial attire in a suitcase, doesn't it?" Mr. Greenlea said.
In Dallas, the doctor removed from the wardrobe a viola case and put in it his silk-bound bundle of bones, the hat fitting nicely into the lower section, the skull cushioned in it.
He shoved the coffin out the back at the Fish Trap Cemetery and turned in his rental at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, where he checked the viola case straight through to Philadelphia.
IV
NOTABLE OCCASIONS ON THE CALENDAR OF DREAD
Chapter 69
ON MONDAY, Clarice Starling had the weekend exotic purchases to check, and there were glitches in her system that required the help of her computer technician from Engineering. Even with severely pruned lists of two or three of the most special vintages from five vintners, the reduction to two sources for American foie gras, and five specialty grocers, the numbers of purchases were formidable. Call-ins from individual liquor stores using the telephone.number on the bulletin had to be entered by hand.
Based on the identification of Dr Lecter in the murder of the deer hunter in Virginia, Starling cut the list to East Coast purchases except for Sonoma foie gras. Fauchon in Paris refused to cooperate. Starling could make no sense of what Vera dal 1926 in Florence said on the telephone, and faxed the Questura for help in case Dr Lecter ordered white truffles.
At the end of the workday on Monday, December 17, Starling had twelve possibilities to follow up. They were combinations of purchases on credit cards. One man had bought a case of Petrus and a supercharged Jaguar, both on the same American Express.
Another placed an order for a case of Batard-Montrachet and a case of green Gironde oysters.
Starling passed each possibility along to the local line bureau for follow-up.
Starling and Eric Pickford worked separate but overlapping shifts in order to have the office manned during store retail hours.
It was Pickford's fourth day on the job and he spent part of it programming his auto-dial telephone. He did not label the buttons.