"The U.S. Attorney thought we'd try an informal approach first. If I recorded Dr. Lecter without his knowledge, and he found out, it would really, it would be the end of any kind of working atmosphere we had. I'm sure you'd agree with that."

"How would he find out?"

He'd read it in the newspaper with everything else you know, you fucking jerk. She didn't answer. "If this should go anywhere and he has to depose, you'd be the first one to see the material and I'm sure you'd be invited to serve as expert witness. We're just trying to get a lead out of him now."

"Do you know why he talks to you, Miss Starling?"

"No, Dr. Chilton."

He looked at each item in the claque of certificates and diplomas on the walls behind his desk as though he were conducting a poll. Now a slow turn to Starling. "Do you really feel you know what you're doing?"

"Sure I do." Lot of ''do's'' there. Starling's legs were shaky from too much exercise. She didn't want to fight with Chilton. She had to have something left when she got to Lecter.

"What you're doing is coming into my hospital to conduct an interview and refusing to share information with me."

"I'm acting on my instructions, Dr. Chilton. I have the U.S. Attorney's night number here. Now please, either discuss it with him or let me do my job."

"I'm not a turnkey here, Miss Starling. I don't come running down here at night just to let people in and out. I had a ticket to Holiday on Ice."

He realized he'd said a ticket. In that instant Starling saw his life, and he knew it.

She saw his bleak refrigerator, the crumbs on the TV tray where he ate alone, the still piles his things stayed in for months until he moved them-- she felt the ache of his whole yellow-smiling Sen-Sen lonesome life-- and switchblade-quick she knew not to spare him, not to talk on or look away. She stared into his face, and with the smallest tilt of her head, she gave him her good looks and bored her knowledge in, speared him with it, knowing he couldn't stand for the conversation to go on.

He sent her with an orderly named Alonzo.

CHAPTER 22

Descending through the asylum with Alonzo toward the final keep, Starling managed to shut out much of the slammings and the screaming, though she felt them shiver the air against her skin. Pressure built on her as though she sank through water, down and down.

The proximity of madmen-- the thought of Catherine Martin bound and alone, with one of them snuffling her, patting his pockets for his tools-- braced Starling for her job. But she needed more than resolution. She needed to be calm, to be still, to be the keenest instrument. She had to use patience in the face of the awful need to hurry. If Dr. Lecter knew the answer, she'd have to find it down among the tendrils of his thought.

Starling found she thought of Catherine Baker Martin as the child she'd seen in the film on the news, the little girl in the sailboat.

Alonzo pushed the buzzer at the last heavy door.

"Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to be still."

"Pardon me?" Alonzo said, and Starling realized she had spoken aloud.

He left her with the big orderly who opened the door. As Alonzo turned away, she saw him cross himself.

"Welcome back," the orderly said, and shot the bolts home behind her.

"Hello, Barney."

A paperback book was wrapped around Barney's massive index finger as he held his place. It was Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility; Starling was set to notice everything.

"How do you want the lights?" he said.

The corridor between the cells was dim. Near the far end she could see bright light from the last cell shining on the corridor floor.

"Dr. Lecter's awake."

"At night, always-- even when his lights are off."

"Let's leave them like they are."

"Stay in the middle going down, don't touch the bars, right?"

"I want to shut that TV off." The television had been moved. It was at the far end, facing up the center of the corridor. Some inmates could see it by leaning their heads against the bars.

"Sure, turn the sound off, but leave the picture if you don't mind. Some of 'em like to look at it. The chair's right there if you want it."

Starling went down the dim corridor alone. She did not look into the cells on either side. Her footfalls seemed loud to her. The only other sounds were wet snoring from one cell, maybe two, and a low chuckle from another.

The late Miggs' cell had a new occupant. She could see long legs outstretched on the floor, the top of a head resting against the bars. She looked as she passed. A man sat on the cell floor in a litter of shredded construction paper. His face was vacant. The television was reflected in his eyes and a shiny thread of spit connected the corner of his mouth and his shoulder.

She didn't want to look into Dr. Lecter's cell until she was sure he had seen her. She passed it, feeling itchy between the shoulders, went to the television and turned off the sound.

Dr. Lecter wore the white asylum pajamas in his white cell. The only colors in the cell were his hair and eyes and his red mouth, in a face so long out of the sun it leached into the surrounding whiteness; his features seemed suspended above the collar of his shirt. He sat at his table behind the nylon net that kept him back from the bars. He was sketching on butcher paper, using his hand for a model. As she watched, he turned his hand over and, flexing his finger's to great tension, drew the inside of the forearm. He used his little finger as a shading stump to modify a charcoal line.

She came a little closer to the bars, and he looked up. For Starling every shadow in the cell flew into his eyes and widow's peak.. -

"Good evening, Dr. Lecter."

The tip of his tongue appeared, with his lips equally red. It touched his upper lip in the exact center and went back in again.

"Clarice."

She heard the slight metallic rasp beneath his voice and wondered how long it had been since last he spoke. Beats of silence…

"You're up late for a school night," he said.

"This is night school," she said, wishing her voice were stronger. "Yesterday I was in West Virginia-- "

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"No, I--"

"You have on a fresh Band-Aid, Clarice."

Then she remembered. "I got a scrape on the side of the pool, swimming today." The Band-Aid was out of sight, on her calf beneath her trousers. He must smell it. "I was in West Virginia yesterday. They found a body over there, Buffalo Bill's latest."

"Not quite his latest, Clarice."

"His next-to-latest."

"Yes."

"She was scalped. Just as you said she would be."

"Do you mind, if I go on sketching while we talk?"

"No, please."

"You viewed the remains?"

"Yes."

"Had you seen his earlier efforts?"

"No. Only pictures."

"How did you feel?"

"Apprehensive. Then I was busy."

"And after?"

"Shaken."

"Could you function all right?" Dr. Lecter rubbed his charcoal on the edge of his butcher paper to refine the point.

"Very well. I functioned very well."

"For Jack Crawford? Or does he still make house calls?"

"He was there."

"Indulge me a moment, Clarice. Would you let your head hang forward, just let it hang forward as though you were asleep. A second more. Thank you, I've got it now. Have a seat, if you like. You had told Jack Crawford what I said before they found her?"

"Yes. He pretty much pooh-poohed it."

"And after he saw the body in West Virginia?

"He talked to his main authority, from the University of--"

"Alan Bloom."

"That's right. Dr… Bloom said Buffalo Bill was fulfilling a persona the newspapers created, the Buffalo Bill scalp-taking business the tabloids were playing with. Dr. Bloom said anybody could see that was coming."