Peterson rolled over. His .45 automatic, cocked and locked, pointed straight down at the figure. “Got the drop,” he said.
Looking down the elevator shaft, Peterson could see the crack of light appear below as the officers in the foyer pushed up on the hatch with a SWAT boathook. The still figure was partly over the hatch and one of the arms moved as the officers pushed from below.
Peterson’s thumb pressed a shade harder on the safety of the Colt. “His arm moved, Lieutenant, but I think it’s just the hatch moving it.”
“Roger. Heave.”
The hatch banged backward and lay against the wall of the elevator shaft. It was hard for Peterson to look down into the light. “He hasn’t moved. His hand’s not on the weapon.”
The calm voice in his ear, “Okay, Johnny, hold up. We’re coming into the car, so watch with the mirror for movement. Any fire will come from us. Affirm?”
“Got it.”
In the lobby, Tate watched them go into the car. A rifleman loaded with armor-piercing aimed his weapon at the ceiling of the elevator. A second officer climbed on a ladder. He was armed with a large automatic pistol with a flashlight clamped beneath it. A mirror and the pistol-light went up through the hatch. Then the officer’s head and shoulders. He handed down a .38 revolver. “He’s dead,” the officer called down.
Tate wondered if the death of Dr. Lecter meant Catherine Martin would die too, all the information lost when the lights went out in that monster mind.
The officers were pulling him down now, the body coming upside down through the elevator hatch, eased down into many arms, an odd deposition in a lighted box. The lobby was filling up, policemen crowding up to see.
A corrections officer pushed forward, looked at the body’s outflung tattooed arms.
“That’s Pembry,” he said.
CHAPTER 38
In the back of the howling ambulance, the young attendant braced himself against the sway and turned to his radio to report to his eme
rgency room supervisor, talking loud above the siren.
“He’s comatose but the vital signs are good. He’s got good pressure. One-thirty over ninety. Yeah, ninety. Pulse eighty-five. He’s got severe facial cuts with elevated flaps, one eye enucleated. I’ve got pressure on the face and an airway in place. Possible gunshot in the head, I can’t tell.”
Behind him on the stretcher, the balled and bloody fists relax inside the waistband. The right hand slides out, finds the buckle on the strap across the chest.
“I’m scared to put much pressure on the head—he showed some convulsive movement before we put him on the gurney. Yeah, got him in the Fowler position.”
Behind the young man, the hand gripped the surgical bandage and wiped out the eyes.
The attendant heard the airway hiss close behind him, turned and saw the bloody face in his, did not see the pistol descending and it caught him hard over the ear.
The ambulance slowing to a stop in traffic on the six-lane freeway, drivers behind it confused and honking, hesitant to pull around an emergency vehicle. Two small pops like backfires in the traffic and the ambulance started up again, weaving, straightening out, moving to the right lane.
The airport exit coming up. The ambulance piddled along in the right lane, various emergency lights going on and off on the outside of it, wipers on and off, then the siren wailing down, starting up, wailing down to silence and the flashing lights going off. The ambulance proceeding quietly, taking the exit to Memphis International Airport, the beautiful building floodlit in the winter evening. It took the curving drive as far as the automated gates to the vast underground parking field. A bloody hand came out to take a ticket. And the ambulance disappeared down the tunnel to the parking field beneath the ground.
CHAPTER 39
Normally, Clarice Starling would have been curious to see Crawford’s house in Arlington, but the bulletin on the car radio about Dr. Lecter’s escape knocked all that out of her.
Lips numb and scalp prickling, she drove by rote, saw the neat 1950s ranch house without looking at it, and only wondered dimly if the lit, curtained windows on the left were where Bella was lying. The doorbell seemed too loud.
Crawford opened the door on the second ring. He wore a baggy cardigan and he was talking on a wireless phone. “Copley in Memphis,” he said. Motioning for her to follow, he led her through the house, grunting into the telephone as he went.
In the kitchen, a nurse took a tiny bottle from the refrigerator and held it to the light. When Crawford raised his eyebrows to the nurse, she shook her head, she didn’t need him.
He took Starling to his study, down three steps into what was clearly a converted double garage. There was good space here, a sofa and chairs, and on the cluttered desk a computer terminal glowed green beside an antique astrolabe. The rug felt as though it was laid on concrete. Crawford waved her to a seat.
He put his hand over the receiver. “Starling, this is baloney, but did you hand Lecter anything at all in Memphis?”
“No.”