Dolarhyde felt that Lecter knew the unreality of the people who die to help you in these things – understood that they are not flesh, but light and air and color and quick sounds quickly ended when you change them. Like balloons of color bursting. That they are more important for the changing, more important than the lives they scrabble after, pleading.

Dolarhyde bore screams as a sculptor bears dust from the beaten stone.

Lecter was capable of understanding that blood and breath were only elements undergoing change to fuel his Radiance. Just as the source of light is burning.

He would like to meet Lecter, talk and share with him, rejoice with him in their shared vision, be recognized by him as John the Baptist recognized the One who came after, sit on him as the Dragon sat on 666 in Blake's Revelation series, and film his death as, dying, he melded with the strength of the Dragon.

Dolarhyde pulled on a new pair of rubber gloves and went to his desk. He unrolled and discarded the outer layer of the toilet paper he had bought. Then he unrolled a strip of seven sheets and tore it off.

Printing carefully on the tissue with his left hand, he wrote a letter to Lecter.

Speech is never a reliable indicator of how a person writes; you never know. Dolarhyde's speech was bent and pruned by disabilities real and imagined, and the difference between his speech and his writing was startling. Still, he found he could not say the most important things he felt.

He wanted to hear from Lecter. He needed a personal response before he could tell Dr. Lecter the important things.

How could he manage that? He rummaged through his box of Lecter clippings, read them all again.

Finally a simple way occurred to him and he wrote again.

The letter seemed too diffident and shy when he read it over. He had signed it "Avid Fan."

He brooded over the signature for several minutes.

"Avid Fan" indeed. His chin rose an imperious fraction.

He put his gloved thumb in his mouth, removed his dentures, and placed them on the blotter.

The upper plate was unusual. The teeth were normal, straight and white, but the pink acrylic upper part was a tortuous shape cast to fit the twists and fissures of his gums. Attached to the plate was a soft plastic prosthesis with an obturator on top, which helped him dose off his soft palate in speech.

He took a small case from his desk. It held another set of teeth. The upper casting was the same, but there was no prosthesis. The crooked teeth had dark stains between them and gave off a faint stench.

They were identical to Grandmother's teeth in the bedside glass downstairs.

Dolarhyde's nostrils flared at the odor. He opened his sunken smile and put them in place and wet them with his tongue.

He folded the letter across the signature and bit down hard on it. When he opened the letter again, the signature was enclosed in an oval bite mark; his notary seal, an imprimatur flecked with old blood.

CHAPTER 12

Attorney Byron Metcalf took off his tie at five o'clock, made himself a drink, and put his feet up on his desk.

"Sure you won't have one?"

"Another time." Graham, picking the cockleburs off his cuffs, was grateful for the air conditioning.

"I didn't know the Jacobis very well," Metcalf said. "They'd only been here three months. My wife and I were there for drinks a couple of times. Ed Jacobi came to me for a new will soon after he was transferred here, that's how I met him."

"But you're his executor."

"Yes. His wife was listed first as executor, then me as alternate in case she was deceased or infirm. He has a brother in Philadelphia, but I gather they weren't close."

"You were an assistant district attorney."

"Yeah, 1968 to '72. I tan for DA in '72. It was close, but I lost. I'm not sorry now.

"How do you see what happened here, Mr. Metcalf?"

"The first thing I thought about was Joseph Yablonski, the labor leader?"

Graham nodded.

"A crime with a motive, power in that case, disguised as an insane attack. We went over Ed Jacobi's papers with a fine-tooth comb – Jerry Estridge from the DA's office and I.

"Nothing. Nobody stood to make much money off Ed Jacobi's death. He made a big salary and he had some patents paying off, but he spent it almost as fast as it came in. Everything was to go to the wife, with a little land in California entailed to the kids and their descendants. He had a small spendthrift trust set up for the surviving son. It'll pay his way through three more years of college. I'm sure he'll still be a freshman by then."

" Niles Jacobi."

"Yeah. The kid gave Ed a big pain in the ass. He lived with his mother in California. Went to Chino for theft. I gather his mother's a flake. Ed went out there to see about him last year. Brought him back to Birmingham and put him in school at Bardwell Community College. Tried to keep him at home, but he dumped on the other kids and made it unpleasant for everybody. Mrs. Jacobi put up with it for a while, but finally they moved him to a dorm."

"Where was he?"

"On the night of June 28?" Metcalf's eyes were hooded as he looked at Graham. "The police wondered about that, and so did I. He went to a movie and then back to school. It's verified. Besides, he has type-O blood. Mr. Graham, I have to pick up my wife in half an hour. We can talk tomorrow if you like. Tell me how I can help you.

"I'd like to see the Jacobis' personal effects. Diaries, pictures, whatever."

"There's not much of that – they lost about everything in a fire in Detroit before they moved down here. Nothing suspicious – Ed was welding in the basement and the sparks got into some paint he had stored down there and the house went up.

"There's some personal correspondence. I have it in the lockboxes with the small valuables. I don't remember any diaries. Everything else is in storage. Niles may have some pictures, but I doubt it. Tell you what – I'm going to court at nine-thirty in the morning, but I could get you into the bank to look at the stuff and come back by for you afterward."

"Fine," Graham said. "One other thing. I could use copies of everything to do with the probate: claims against the estate, any contest of the will, correspondence. I'd like to have all the paper.

"The Atlanta DA's office asked me for that already. They're comparing with the Leeds estate in Atlanta, I know," Metcalf said.

"Still, I'd like copies for myself."

"Okay, copies to you. You don't really think it's money, though, do you?"

"No. I just keep hoping the same name will come up here and in Atlanta."

"So do I."

# # #

Student housing at Bardwell Community College was four small dormitory buildings set around a littered quadrangle of beaten earth. A stereo war was in progress when Graham got there.

Opposing sets of speakers on the motel-style balconies blared at each other across the quad. It was Kiss versus the 1812 Overture. A water balloon arched high in the air and burst on the ground ten feet from Graham.

He ducked under a clothesline and stepped over a bicycle to get through the sitting room of the suite Niles Jacobi shared. The door to Jacobi's bedroom was ajar and music blasted through the crack. Graham knocked.

No response.

He pushed open the door. A tall boy with a spotty face sat on one of the twin beds sucking on a four-foot bong pipe. A girl in dungarees lay on the other bed.

The boy's head jerked around to face Graham. He was struggling to think.

"I'm looking for Niles Jacobi."


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