Hannibal Page 0,24
in finding some records from the.Baltimore State Hospital."
Inelle Corey speaks with exaggerated precision to express righteousness or anger.
"We have went through this with the state board at the time of closure, Miss-" "Starling."
"Miss Starling. You will find that not a patient went out of that hospital without a folder. You will find that not a folder went out of that hospital that was not approved by a supervisor. As for as the deceased go, the Health Department did not need their folders, the Bureau of Vital Statistics did not want their folders, and as for as I know, the dead folders, that is the folders of the deceased, remained at the Baltimore State Hospital past my separation date and I was about the last one out. The elopements went to the city police and the sheriff's department."
"Elopements?"
"That's when somebody runs off. Trusties took off sometimes."
"Would Dr Hannibal Lecter be carried as an elopement? Do you think his records might have gone to law enforcement?"
"He was not an elopement. He was never carried as our elopement. He was not in our custody when he took off. I went down there to the bottom and looked at Dr Lecter one time, showed him to my sister when she was here with the boys. I feel sort of nasty and cold when I think about it. He stirred up one of those other ones to throw some" - she lowered her voice - " jism on us. Do you know what that is?"
"I've heard the term," Starling said. "Was it Mr. Miggs, by any chance? He had a good arm."
"I've shut it out of my mind. I remember you. You came to the hospital and talked to Fred - Dr Chilton and went down there in that basement with Lecter, didn't you?"
"Yes."
Dr Frederick Chilton was the director of the Baltimore State I-hospital for the Criminally Insane who went missing while on vacation after Dr Lecter's escape.
"You know Fred disappeared."
"Yes, I heard that."
Ms Corey developed quick, bright tears. "He was my fiance," she said. "He was gone, and then the hospital closed, it was just like the roof had fell in on me. If I hadn't had my church I could not have got by."
"I'm sorry," Starling said. "You have a good job now.
"But I don't have Fred. He was a fine, fine man. We shared a love, a love you don't find everyday. He was voted Boy of the Year in Canton when he was in high school. "
"Well, I'll be. Let me ask you this, Inelle, did he keep the records in his office, or were they out in reception where your desk -"."They were in the wall cabinets in his office and then they got so many we got big filing cabinets out in the reception area. They was always locked, of course. When we moved out, they moved in the methadone clinic on a temporary basis and a lot of stuff was moved around."
"Did you ever see and handle Dr Lecter's file?"
"Sure."
"Do you remember any X rays in it? Were X rays filed with the medical reports or separate?"
"With. Filed with. They were bigger than the files and that made it clumsy. We had an X-ray but no full-time radiologist to keep a separate file. I honestly don't remember if it was one with his or not. There was an electrocardiogram tape Fred used to show to people, Dr Lecter - I don't even want to call him a doctor was all wired up to the electrocardiograph when he got the poor nurse. See, it was freakish - his pulse rate didn't even go up much when he attacked her. He got a separated shoulder when all the orderlies, you know, grabbed aholt of him and pulled him off of her. They'd of had to X-ray him for that. They'd have give him plenty more than a separated shoulder if I'd had something to say about it."
"If anything occurs to you, any place the file might be, would you call me?"
"We'll do what we call a global search?"
Ms Corey said, savoring the term, "but I don't think we'll find anything. A lot of stuff just got abandoned, not by us, but by the methadone people."
The coffee mugs had the thick rims that dribble down the sides. Starling watched Inelle Corey walk heavily away like hell's own option and drank half a cup with her napkin tucked under her chin.
Starling was