The tape came on Saturday in a small package addressed to Will Graham, c/o FBI Headquarters, Washington. It had been mailed in Chicago on the day Lounds was killed.

The laboratory and Latent Prints found nothing useful on the cassette case or the wrapper.

A copy of the tape went to Chicago in the afternoon pouch. Special Agent Chester brought it to Graham in the jury room at midafternoon. A memo from Lloyd Bowman was attached:

Voiceprints verify this is Lounds. Obviously he was repeating dictation. It's a new tape, manufactured in the last three months and never used before. Behavioral Science is picking at the content. Dr. Bloom should hear it when he's well enough – you decide about that.

Clearly the killer's trying to rattle you.

He'll do that once too often, I think.

A dry vote of confidence, much appreciated.

Graham knew he had to listen to the tape. He waited until Chester left.

He didn't want to be closed up in the jury room with it. The empty courtroom was better – some sun came in the tall windows. The cleaning women had been in and dust still hung in the sunlight.

The tape recorder was small and gray. Graham put it on a counsel table and pushed the button.

A technician's monotone: "Case number 426238, item 814, tagged and logged, a tape cassette. This is a rerecording."

A shift in the quality of the sound.

Graham held on to the railing of the jury box with both hands.

Freddy Lounds sounded tired and frightened.

"I have had a great privilege. I have seen… I have seen with wonder… wonder and awe… awe… the strength of the Great Red Dragon."

The original recording had been interrupted frequently as it was made. The machine caught the clack of the stop key each time. Graham saw the finger on the key. Dragon finger.

"I lied about Him. All I wrote was lies from Will Graham. He made me write them. I have… I have blasphemed against the Dragon. Even so… the Dragon is merciful. Now I want to serve Him. He… has helped me understand… His Splendor and I will praise Him. Newspapers, when you print this, always capitalize the H in 'Him.'

"He knows you made me lie, Will Graham. Because I was forced to lie, He will be more… more merciful to me than to you, Will Graham.

"Reach behind you, Will Graham… and feel for the small knobs on the top of your pelvis. Feel your spine between them… that is the precise spot… where the Dragon will snap your spine.

Graham kept his hands on the railing. Damn if I'll feel. Did the Dragon not know the nomenclature of the iliac spine, or did he choose not to use it?

"There's much… for you to dread. From… from my own lips you'll learn a little more to dread."

A pause before the awful screaming. Worse, the blubbering lipless cry, "You goddanned astard you romised."

Graham put his head between his knees until the bright spots stopped dancing in front of his eyes. He opened his mouth and breathed deep.

An hour passed before he could listen to it again.

He took the recorder into the jury room and tried to listen there. Too close. He left the tape recorder turning and went back into the courtroom. He could hear through the open door.

"I have had a great privilege…"

Someone was at the courtroom door. Graham recognized the young clerk from the Chicago FBI office and motioned for him to come in.

"A letter came for you," the clerk said. "Mr. Chester sent me with it. He told me to be sure and say the postal inspector fluoroscoped it."

The clerk pulled the letter out of his breast pocket. Heavy mauve stationery. Graham hoped it was from Molly.

"It's stamped, see?"

"Thank you."

"Also it's payday." The clerk handed him his check. On the tape, Freddy screamed.

The young man flinched.

"Sorry," Graham said.

"I don't see how you stand it," the young man said.

"Go home," Graham said.

He sat in the jury box to read his letter. He wanted some relief. The letter was from Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Dear Will,

A brief note of congratulations for the job you did on Mr. Lounds. I admired it enormously. What a cunning boy you are!

Mr. Lounds often offended me with his ignorant drivel, but he did enlighten me on one thing – your confinement in the mental hospital. My inept attorney should have brought that out in court, but never mind.

You know, Will, you worry too much. You'd be so much more comfortable if you relaxed with yourself.

We don't invent our natures, Will; they're issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?

I want to help you, Will, and I'd like to start by asking you this: When you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Ganett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn't the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn't you feel so bad because killing him felt so good?

Think about it, but don't worry about it. Why shouldn't it feel good? It must feel good to God – He does it all the time, and are we not made in His image?

You may have noticed in the paper yesterday, God dropped a church roof on thirty-four of His worshipers in Texas Wednesday night – just as they were groveling through a hymn. Don't you think that felt good?

Thirty-four. He'd let you have Hobbs.

He got 160 Filipinos in one plane crash last week – He'll let you have measly Hobbs. He won't begrudge you one measly murder. Two now. That's all right.

Watch the papers. God always stays ahead.

Best,

Hannibal Lecter, M.D.

Graham knew that Lecter was dead wrong about Hobbs, but for a half-second he wondered if Lecter might be a little bit right in the case of Freddy Lounds. The enemy inside Graham agreed with any accusation.

He had put his hand on Freddy's shoulder in the Tattler photograph to establish that he really had told Freddy those insulting things about the Dragon. Or had he wanted to put Freddy at risk, just a little? He wondered.

The certain knowledge that he would not knowingly miss a chance at the Dragon reprieved him.

"I'm just about worn out with you crazy sons of bitches," Graham said aloud.

He wanted a break. He called Molly, but no one answered the telephone at Willy's grandparents' house. "Probably out in their damned motorhome," he mumbled.

He went out for coffee, partly to assure himself that he was not hiding in the jury room.

In the window of a jewelry store he saw a delicate antique gold bracelet. It cost him most of his paycheck. He had it wrapped and stamped for mailing. Only when he was sure he was alone at the mail drop did he address it to Molly in Oregon. Graham did not realize, as Molly did, that he gave presents when he was angry.

He didn't want to go back to his jury room and work, but he had to. The thought of Valerie Leeds spurred him.

I'm sorry I can't come to the phone nght now, Valerie Leeds had said.

He wished that he had known her. He wished… Useless, childish thought.

Graham was tired, selfish, resentful, fatigued to a child-minded state in which his standards of measurement were the first ones he learned; where the direction "north" was Highway 61 and "six feet" was forever the length of his father.

He made himself settle down to the minutely detailed victim profile he was putting together from a fan of reports and his own observations.

Affluence. That was one parallel. Both families were affluent. Odd that Valerie Leeds saved money on panty hose.

Graham wondered if she had been a poor child. He thought so; her own children were a little too well turned out.

Graham had been a poor child, following his father from the boatyards in Biloxi and Greenville to the lake boats on Erie. Always the new boy at school, always the stranger. He had a half-buried grudge against the rich.