“Yes.”
“Didn’t he have a pistol?”
“No.”
“Clarice, he was working at night, in a pickup truck, armed only with a shotgun.… Tell me, did he wear a time clock on his belt by any chance? One of those things where they have keys screwed to posts all over town and you have to drive to them and stick them in your clock? So the town fathers know you weren’t asleep. Tell me if he wore one, Clarice.”
“Yes.”
“He was a night watchman, wasn’t he, Clarice, he wasn’t a marshal at all. I’ll know if you lie.”
“The job description said night marshal.”
“What happened to it?”
“What happened to what?”
“The time clock. What happened to it after your father was shot?”
“I don’t remember.”
“If you do remember, will you tell me?”
“Yes. Wait—the mayor came to the hospital and asked my mother for the clock and the badge.” She hadn’t known she knew that. The mayor in his leisure suit and Navy surplus shoes. The cocksucker. “Quid pro quo, Dr. Lecter.”
“Did you think for a second you’d made that up? No, if you’d made it up, it wouldn’t sting. We were talking about transsexuals. You said violence and destructive aberrant behavior are not statistical correlatives of transsexualism. True. Do you remember what we said about anger expressed as lust, and lupus presenting as hives? Billy’s not a transsexual, Clarice, but he thinks he is, he tries to be. He’s tried to be a lot of things, I expect.”
“You said that was close to the way we’d catch him.”
“There are three major centers for transsexual surgery: Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s applied for sex reassignment at one or all of them and been denied.”
“On what basis would they reject him, what would show up?”
“You’re very quick, Clarice. The first reason would be criminal record. That disqualifies an applicant, unless the crime is relatively harmless and related to the gender-identity problem. Cross-dressing in public, something like that. If he lied successfully about a serious criminal record, then the personality inventories would get him.”
“How?”
“You have to know how in order to sieve them, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why d
on’t you ask Dr. Bloom?”
“I’d rather ask you.”
“What will you get out of this, Clarice, a promotion and a raise? What are you, a G-9? What do little G-9’s get nowadays?”
“A key to the front door, for one thing. How would he show up on the diagnostics?”
“How did you like Montana, Clarice?”
“Montana’s fine.”
“How did you like your mother’s cousin’s husband?”
“We were different.”