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lipstick rolled across the floor.

Stooping to pick up Molly's things, Crawford heard her heels tap fast as she left him, abandoning her purse.

He gave the purse to the charge nurse.

Crawford knew it would be nearly impossible for Lecter to get what he would need, but with Lecter he took no chances.

He had an intern fluoroscope the letter in the X-ray department. Crawford slit the envelope on all sides with a penknife and examined its inside surface and the note for any stain or dust - they would have lye for scrubbing atChesapeakeHospital, and there was a pharmacy.

Satisfied at last, he read it:

Dear Will,

Here we are, you and I, languishing in our hospitals. You have your pain and I am without my books - the learned Dr. Chilton has seen to that.

We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won't be very ugly.

I think of you often.

HannibalLecter

The intern looked at his watch, "Do you need me anymore?"

"No," Crawford said. "Where's the incinerator?"

When Crawford returned in four hours for the next visiting penod, Molly wasn't in the waiting room and she wasn't in the intensive-care unit.

Graham was awake. He drew a question mark on the pad at once. "D. dead how?" he wrote under it.

Crawford told him. Graham lay still for a full minute. Then he wrote, "Lammed how?"

"Okay," Crawford said. "St. Louis. Dolarhyde must have been looking for Reba MeClane. He came in the lab while we were there and spotted us. His prints were on an open furnace-room window - it wasn't reported until yesterday."

Graham tapped the pad. "Bodv?"

"We think it was a guy named Arnold Lang - he's missing. His car was found inMemphis. It had been wiped down. They'll run me out in a minute. Let me give it to you in order.

"Dolarhyde knew we were there. He gave us the slip at the plant and drove to a Servco Supreme station at Lindbergh and U.S. 270. Arnold Lang worked there.

"Reba McClane said Dolarhyde had a tiff with a service-station attendant on Saturday before last. We think it was Lang.

"He snuffed Lang and took his body to the house. Then he went by Reba MeClane's. She was in a clinch with Ralph Mandy at the door. He shot Mandy and dragged him into the hedge."

The nurse came in.

"For God's sake, it's police business," Crawford said. He talked fast as she pulled him by the coat sleeve to the door. "He chloroformed Reba MeClane and took her to the house. The body was there," Crawford said from the hall.

Graham had to wait four hours to find out the rest.

"He gave her this and that, you know, 'Will I kill you or not?' " Crawford said as he came in the door.

"You know the routine about the key hanging around his neck - that was to make sure she felt the body. So she could tell us she certainly did feel a body. All right, it's this way and that way. 'I can't stand to see you burn,' he says, and blows Lang's head off with a twelve-gauge.

"Lang was perfect. He didn't have any teeth anyway. Maybe Dolarhyde knew the maxillary arch survives fires a lot of times - who knows what he knew? Anyway, Lang didn't have any maxillary arch after Dolarhyde got through with him. He shot the head off Lang's body and he must have tipped a chair or something for the thud of the body falling. He'd hung the key around Lang's neck.

"Now Reba's scrambling around looking for the key. Dolarhyde's in the corner watching. Her ears are ringing from the shotgun. She won't hear his little noises.

"He's started a fire, but he hasn't put the gas to it yet. He's got gas in the room. She got out of the house okay. If she had panicked too much, run into a wall or something or frozen, I guess he'd have sapped her and dragged her outside. She wouldn't have known how she got out. But she had to get out for it to work. Oh hell, here comes that nurse."

Graham wrote fast. "How vehicle?"

"You have to admire this," Crawford said. "He knew he'd have to leave his van at the house. He couldn't drive two vehicles out there, and he needed a getaway piece.

"This is what he did: he made Lang