bow hunting and stuck an arrow through his leg.
"The doctor of record was a resident surgeon, but Lecter had treated him first - he was on duty in the emergency room. His name was on the admissions log. It had been a long time since the accident, but I thought Lecter might remember if anything had seemed fishy about the arrow wound, so I went to his office to see him. We were grabbing at anything then.
"He was practicing psychiatry by that time. He had a nice office. Antiques. He said he didn't remember much about the arrow wound, that one of the victim's hunting buddies had brought him in, and that was it.
"Something bothered me, though. I thought it was something Lecter said, or something in the office. Crawford and I hashed it over. We checked the files, and Lecter had no record. I wanted some time in his office by myself, but we couldn't get a warrant. We had nothing to show. So I went back to see him.
"It was Sunday, he saw patients on Sunday. The building was empty except for a couple of people in his waiting room. He saw me right away. We were talking and he was making this polite effort to help me and I looked up at some very old medical books on the shelf above his head. And I knew it was him.
"When I looked at him again, maybe my face changed, I don't know. I knew it and he knew I knew it. I still couldn't think of the reason, though. I didn't trust it. I had to figure it out. So I mumbled something and got out of there, into the hall. There was a pay phone in the hall. I didn't want to stir him up until I had some help. I was talking to the police switchboard when he came out a service door behind me in his socks. I never heard him coming. I felt his breath was all, and then... there was the rest of it."
"How did you know, though?"
"I think it was maybe a week later in the hospital I finally figured it out. It was Wound Man - anillustration they used in a lot of the early medical books like the ones Lecter had. It shows different kinds of battle injuries, all in one figure. I had seen it in a survey course a pathologist was teaching at GWU. The sixth victim's position and his injuries were a close match to Wound Man."
"Wound Man, you say? That's all you had?"
"Well, yeah. It was a coincidence that I had seen it. A piece of luck."
"That's some luck."
"If you don't believe me, what the fuck did you ask me for?"
"I didn't hear that."
"Good. I didn't mean to say it. That's the way it happened, though."
"Okay,"Springfieldsaid. "Okay. Thank you for telling me. I need to know things like that."
* * *
Parsons' description of the man in the alley and the information on the cat and the dog were possible indications of the killer's methods: it seemed likely that he scouted as a meter reader and felt compelled to hurt the victims' pets before he came to kill the family.
The immediate problem the police faced was whether or not to publicize their theory.
With the public aware of the danger signals and watching, police might get advance warning of the killer's next attack - but the killer probably followed the news too.
He might change his habits.
There was strong feeling in the police department that the slender leads should be kept secret except for a special bulletin to veterinarians and animal shelters throughout the Southeast asking for immediate reports on pet mutilations.
That meant not giving the public the best possible warning. It was a moral question, and the police were not comfortable with it.
They consulted Dr. Alan Bloom inChicago. Dr. Bloom said that if the killer read a warning in the newspapers, he would probably change his method of casing a house. Dr. Bloom doubted that the man could stop attacking the pets, regardless of the risk. The psychiatrist told the police that they should by no means assume they had twenty-five days to work - the period before the next full moon on August 25.
On the morning of July31,three hours after Parsons gave his description, a decision was reached in a telephone conference amongBirminghamandAtlantapolice and Crawford inWashington: they would send the private bulletin to veterinarians, canvass for three days in the neighborhood with the artist's sketch, then