“You got stuck in the hiring freeze.”
Starling nodded. “I was lucky though—I found out in time to qualify as a Forensic Fellow. Then I could work in the lab until the Academy had an opening.”
“You wrote to me about coming here, didn’t you, and I don’t think I answered—I know I didn’t. I should have.”
“You’ve had plenty else to do.”
“Do you know about VI-CAP?”
“I know it’s the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The Law Enforcement Bulletin says you’re working on a database, but you aren’t operational yet.”
Crawford nodded. “We’ve developed a questionnaire. It applies to all the known serial murderers in modern times.” He handed her a thick sheaf of papers in a flimsy binding. “There’s a section for investigators, and one for surviving victims, if any. The blue is for the killer to answer if he will, and the pink is
a series of questions an examiner asks the killer, getting his reactions as well as his answers. It’s a lot of paperwork.”
Paperwork. Clarice Starling’s self-interest snuffled ahead like a keen beagle. She smelled a job offer coming—probably the drudgery of feeding raw data into a new computer system. It was tempting to get into Behavioral Science in any capacity she could, but she knew what happens to a woman if she’s ever pegged as a secretary—it sticks until the end of time. A choice was coming, and she wanted to choose well.
Crawford was waiting for something—he must have asked her a question. Starling had to scramble to recall it:
“What tests have you given? Minnesota Multiphasic, ever? Rorschach?”
“Yes, MMPI, never Rorschach,” she said. “I’ve done Thematic Apperception and I’ve given children Bender-Gestalt.”
“Do you spook easily, Starling?”
“Not yet.”
“See, we’ve tried to interview and examine all the thirty-two known serial murderers we have in custody, to build up a database for psychological profiling in unsolved cases. Most of them went along with it—I think they’re driven to show off, a lot of them. Twenty-seven were willing to cooperate. Four on death row with appeals pending clammed up, understandably. But the one we want the most, we haven’t been able to get. I want you to go after him tomorrow in the asylum.”
Clarice Starling felt a glad knocking in her chest and some apprehension too.
“Who’s the subject?”
“The psychiatrist—Dr. Hannibal Lecter,” Crawford said.
A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering.
Starling looked at Crawford steadily, but she was too still. “Hannibal the Cannibal,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Yes, well— Okay, right. I’m glad of the chance, but you have to know I’m wondering—why me?”
“Mainly because you’re available,” Crawford said. “I don’t expect him to cooperate. He’s already refused, but it was through an intermediary—the director of the hospital. I have to be able to say our qualified examiner went to him and asked him personally. There are reasons that don’t concern you. I don’t have anybody left in this section to do it.”
“You’re jammed—Buffalo Bill—and the things in Nevada,” Starling said.
“You got it. It’s the old story—not enough warm bodies.”
“You said tomorrow—you’re in a hurry. Any bearing on a current case?”
“No. I wish there were.”
“If he balks on me, do you still want a psychological evaluation?”
“No. I’m waist-deep in inaccessible-patient evaluations of Dr. Lecter and they’re all different.”
Crawford shook two vitamin C tablets into his palm, and mixed an Alka-Seltzer at the water cooler to wash them down. “It’s ridiculous, you know; Lecter’s a psychiatrist and he writes for the psychiatric journals himself—extraordinary stuff—but it’s never about his own little anomalies. He pretended to go along with the hospital director, Chilton, once in some tests—sitting around with a blood-pressure cuff on his penis, looking at wreck pictures—then Lecter published first what he’d learned about Chilton and made a fool out of him. He responds to serious correspondence from psychiatric students in fields unrelated to his case, and that’s all he does. If he won’t talk to you, I just want straight reporting. How does he look, how does his cell look, what’s he doing. Local color, so to speak. Watch out for the press going in and coming out. Not the real press, the supermarket press. They love Lecter even better than Prince Andrew.”