The Birmingham police were not stupid. He could see where they had pushed through the brush, searching the area as a matter of course. But that was before the cat was found. They were looking for clues, dropped objects, tracks – not for a vantage point.

He went a few yards into the forest behind the Jacobi house and worked back and forth in the dappled shade. First he took the high ground that afforded a partial view of the yard and then worked his way down the tree line.

He had searched for more than an hour when a wink of light from the ground caught his eye. He lost it, found it again. It was the ring-pull tab from a soft-drink can half-buried in the leaves beneath an elm tree, one of the few elms among the pines.

He spotted it from eight feet away and went no closer for five minutes while he scanned the ground around the tree. He squatted and brushed the leaves away ahead of him as he approached the tree, duck-walking in the path he made to avoid ruining any impressions. Working slowly, he cleared the leaves all around the trunk. No footprints had pressed through the mat of last year's leaves.

Near the aluminum tab he found a dried apple core eaten thin by ants. Birds had pecked out the seeds. He studied the ground for ten more minutes. Finally he sat on the ground, stretched out his aching legs, and leaned back against the tree.

A cone of gnats swarmed in a column of sunlight. A caterpillar rippled along the underside of a leaf.

There was a wedge of red creek mud from the instep of a boot on the limb above his head.

Graham hung his coat on a branch and began to climb carefully on the opposite side of the tree, peering around the trunk at the limbs above the wedge of mud. At thirty feet be looked around the trunk, and there was the Jacobi house 175 yards away. It looked different from this height, the roof color dominant. He could see the backyard and the ground behind the outbuildings very well. A decent pair of field glasses would pick up the expression on a face easily at this distance.

Graham could hear traffic in the distance, and far away he heard a beagle on a case. A cicada started its numbing bandsaw buzz and drowned out the other sounds.

A thick limb just above him joined the trunk at a right angle to the Jacobi house. He pulled himself up until he could see, and leaned around the trunk to look at it.

Close by his cheek a soft-drink can was wedged between the limb and the trunk.

"I love it," Graham whispered into the bark. "Oh sweet Jesus yes. Come on, can."

Still, a child might have left it.

He climbed higher on his side of the tree, dicey work on small branches, and moved around until he could look down on the big limb.

A patch of outer bark on the upper side of the limb was shaved away, leaving a field of green inner bark the size of a playing card. Centered in the green rectangle, carved through to the white wood, Graham saw this:



It was done carefully and cleanly with a very sharp knife. It was not the work of a child.

Graham photographed the mark, carefully bracketing his exposures.

The view from the big limb was good, and it had been improved: the stub of a small branch jutted down from the limb above. It had been clipped off to clear the view. The fibers were compressed and the end slightly flattened in the cutting.

Graham looked for the severed branch. If it had been on the ground, he would have seen it. There, tangled in the limbs below, brown withered leaves amid the green foliage.

The laboratory would need both sides of the cut in order to measure the pitch of the cutting edges. That meant coming back here with a saw. He made several photographs of the stub. All the while he mumbled to himself.

I think that after you killed the cat and threw it into the yard, my man, you climbed up here and waited. I think you watched the children and passed the time whittling and dreaming. When night came, you saw them passing their bright windows and you watched the shades go down, and you saw the lights go out one by one. And after a while you climbed down and went in to them. Didn't you? It wouldn't be too hard a climb straight down ftom the big limb with a flashlight and the bright moon rising.

It was a hard enough climb for Graham. He stuck a twig into the opening of the soft-drink can, gently lifted it from the crotch of the tree, and descended, holding the twig in his teeth when he had to use both hands.

Back at the housing project, Graham found that someone had written "Levon is a doo-doo head" in the dust on the side of his car. The height of the writing indicated that even the youngest residents were well along in literacy.

He wondered if they had written on the Tooth Fairy's car.

Graham sat for a few minutes looking up at the rows of windows. There appeared to be about a hundred units. It was possible that someone might remember a white stranger in the parking lot late at night. Even though a month had passed, it was well worth trying. To ask every resident, and get it done quickly, he would need the help of the Birmingham police.

He fought the temptation to send the drink can straight to Jimmy Price in Washington. He had to ask the Birmingham police for manpower. It would be better to give them what he had. Dusting the can would be a straightforward job. Trying for fingerprints etched by acid sweat was another matter. Price could still do it after Birmingham dusted, as long as the can wasn't handled with bare fingers. Better give it to the police. He knew the FBI document section would fall on the carving like a rabid mongoose. Pictures of that for everybody, nothing lost there.

He called Birmingham Homicide from the Jacobi house. The detectives arrived just as the realtor, Geehan, was ushering in his prospective buyers.

Eileen was reading a National Tattler article called "Filth in Your Bread!" when Dolarhyde came into the cafeteria. She had eaten only the filling in her tuna-salad sandwich.

Behind the red goggles Dolarhyde's eyes zigged down the ftont page of the Tattler. Cover lines in addition to "Filth in Your Bread!" included "Elvis at Secret Love Retreat -Exclusive Pix!!" "Stunning Breakthrough for Cancer Victims!" and the big banner line " Hannibal the Cannibal Helps Lawmen – Cops Consult Fiend in 'Tooth Fairy' Murders."

He stood at the window absently stirring his coffee until he heard Eileen get up. She dumped her tray in the trash container and was about to throw in the Tattler when Dolarhyde touched her shoulder.

"May I have that paper, Eileen?"

"Sure, Mr. D. I just get it for the horoscopes."

Dolarhyde read it in his office with the door closed.

Freddy Lounds had two bylines in the same double-page center spread. The main story was a breathless reconstruction of the Jacobi and Leeds murders. Since the police had not divulged many of the specifics,Lounds consulted his imagination for lurid details. Dolarhyde found them banal.

The sidebar was more interesting:

Insane Fiend Consulted in Mass Murders

by Cop He Tried to Kill

by

Freddy Lounds

CHESAPEAKE, MD. – Federal manhunters, stymied in their search for the "Tooth Fairy," psychopathic slayer of entire families in Birmingham and Atlanta, have turned to the most savage killer in captivity for help.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whose unspeakable practices were reported in these pages three years ago, was consulted this week in his maximum-security-asylum cell by ace investigator William (Will) Graham.