Starling thought about the dungeonlike basement level of the asylum where Dr. Lecter had lived for eight years. She didn’t want to go down there. She could use her cell phone and ask for a city police unit to go down there with her. She could ask the Baltimore field office to send another FBI agent with her. It was late on the gray afternoon and there was no way, even now, she could avoid the rush-hour traffic in Washington. If she waited, it would be worse.
She leaned on Chilton’s desk in spite of the dust and tried to decide. Did she really think there might be files in the basement, or was she drawn back to the first place she ever saw Hannibal Lecter?
If Starling’s career in law enforcement had taught her anything about herself, it was this: She was not a thrill seeker, and she would be happy never to feel fear again. But there might be files in the basement. She could find out in five minutes.
She could remember the clang of the high-security doors behind her when she went down there years ago. In
case one should close behind her this time, she called the Baltimore field office and told them where she was and made an arrangement to call back in an hour to say she was out.
The lights worked in the inside staircase, where Chilton had walked her to the basement level years ago. Here he had explained the safety procedures used in dealing with Hannibal Lecter, and here he had stopped, beneath this light, to show her his wallet photograph of the nurse whose tongue Dr. Lecter had eaten during an attempted physical examination. If Dr. Lecter’s shoulder had been dislocated as he was subdued, surely there must be an X ray.
A draft of air on the stairs touched her neck, as though there were a window open somewhere.
A McDonald’s hamburger box was on the landing, and scattered napkins. A stained cup that had held beans. Dumpster food. Some ropey turds and napkins in the corner. The light ended at the bottom floor landing, before the great steel door to the violent ward, now standing open and hooked back against the wall. Starling’s flashlight held five D-cells and cast a good wide beam.
She shined it down the long corridor of the former maximum security unit. There was something bulky at the far end. Eerie to see the cell doors standing open. The floor was littered with bread wrappers and cups. A soda can, blackened from use as a crack pipe, lay on the former orderly’s desk.
Starling flipped the light switches behind the orderly station. Nothing. She took out her cell phone. The red light seemed very bright in the gloom. The phone was useless underground, but she spoke into it loudly. “Barry, back the truck up to the side entrance. Bring a floodlight. You’ll need some dollies to move this stuff up the stairs… yeah, come on down.”
Then Starling called into the dark, “Attention in there. I’m a federal officer. If you are living here illegally, you are free to leave. I will not arrest you. I am not interested in you. If you return after I complete my business, it’s of no interest to me. You can come out now. If you attempt to interfere with me you will suffer severe personal injury when I bust a cap in your ass. Thank you.”
Her voice echoed down the corridor where so many had ranted their voices down to croaks and gummed the bars when their teeth were gone.
Starling remembered the reassuring presence of the big orderly, Barney, when she had come to interview Dr. Lecter. The curious courtesy with which Barney and Dr. Lecter treated each other. No Barney now. Something from school bumped at her mind and, as a discipline, she made herself recall it:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
Rose Garden, right. This was damn sure not the rose garden.
Starling, who had been encouraged in recent editorials to hate her gun as well as herself, found the touch of the weapon not at all hateful when she was uneasy. She held the .45 against her leg and started down the hall behind her flashlight. It is hard to watch both flanks at once, and imperative not to leave anyone behind you. Water dripped somewhere.
Bed frames disassembled and stacked in the cells. In others, mattresses. The water stood in the center of the corridor floor and Starling, ever mindful of her shoes, stepped from one side of the narrow puddle to the other as she proceeded. She remembered Barney’s advice from years ago when all the cells were occupied. Stay in the middle as you go down.
Filing cabinets, all right. In the center of the corridor all the way down, dull olive in her flashlight beam.
Here was the cell that had been occupied by Multiple Miggs, the one she had hated most to pass. Miggs, who whispered filth to her and threw body fluids. Miggs, whom Dr. Lecter killed by instructing him to swallow his vile tongue. And when Miggs was dead, Sammie lived in the cell. Sammie, whose poetry Dr. Lecter encouraged with startling effect on the poet. Even now she could hear Sammie howling his verse:
I WAN TO GO TO JESA
I WAN TO GO WIV CRIEZ
I CAN GO WIV JESA
EF I AC RELL NIZE.
She still had the labored crayon text, somewhere.
The cell was stacked with mattresses now, and bales of bed linens tied up in sheets.
And at last, Dr. Lecter’s cell.
The sturdy table where he read was still bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. The boards were gone from the shelves that had held his books, but the brackets still stuck out of the walls.