Red Dragon

Graham drives to Atlanta to visit the house where the Leeds family was murdered. He wants to visit the crime scene alone as he is “not sure how he [will] act” (11). He enters the house and traces the killer’s route through the rooms, sensing “madness like a bloodhound sniffs a shirt” (12). The killer entered the home through the rear of the house and then killed the three children and the two parents. He smashed the mirrors in the house and placed shards of mirrors in the family’s eyes, arranging their bodies to watch him as he raped Mrs. Leeds. After reviewing the police reports, the “dark stains” (14) of blood, and his own understanding of the killer’s mindset, Graham writes a memo to Crawford asking about the family dog. He returns to his hotel, where he tries to ignore the people attending a convention in the same building. In his room, he tries to sleep but cannot stop thinking about the Leeds’s house. After waking “rigid and sweating” (21), he visits a drugstore and remembers similar stores from his youth. All the time, he thinks about the killer arranging the Leeds family into “a dead audience” (23) to observe the killer’s performance. He begins to feel an initial bond of understanding with the killer. He suggests that Crawford check Mrs. Leeds’s “fingernails and toenails” (25) for hidden fingerprints.

Crawford and Graham meet at the Atlanta police headquarters. Graham explains his theory that the killer may have removed his gloves in the “intimate” (27) moment with Mrs. Leeds. Crawford arranged for the fingerprint specialist Jimmy Price to be brought out especially before Mrs. Leeds’s funeral. Atlanta Chief of Detectives, Buddy Springfield, gives a briefing to the team of detectives investigating the murders. So far, they have made “zero progress” (29). The FBI have uncovered “a clear bite mark” (29) left behind on a piece of cheese in the Leeds’s refrigerator which match bite marks on Mrs. Leeds’s body. Crawford assures the Atlanta detectives that they are “all after the same thing” (31) and reiterates that he does not care about his men getting credit for any arrest. Graham reluctantly speaks before the group. He suggests that the detectives investigate those with a history of biting. Commander Lewis warns his men not to use the new nickname for the killer. He believes that the Tooth Fairy sounds too “flippant” (34). Crawford receives news that Price has found a “partial” (36) set of prints, just as Graham predicted. As Graham and Crawford exit the police building, a reporter for The National Tattler named Freddy Lounds shouts at Graham. Lounds wrote a disparaging article about Graham’s capture of Hannibal Lecter that featured a photograph of Graham recovering in a hospital bed under the headline “Crazy Guts Cop” (39). Crawford chases Lounds away. In a diner, Crawford and Graham discuss the case. They have reached out to a forensic scientist named Alan Bloom for assistance in creating a psychological profile of the killer. Bloom suggests that the killer “might be disfigured” (40). Graham agrees. He prepares to delve into the cases concerning the murder of the Jacobi family.

A meter reader named Hoyt Lewis stops his van near the Leeds home. He hears “a loud voice” (43), which he knows belongs to an annoying customer named H. G. Parsons. He argues with Parsons, who complains that someone else has recently been to read the meter. Later, Lewis talks to his supervisor at a bar. His supervisor suggests that Lewis pass this information along to the police.

Graham returns to the Leeds house. He wants to understand “how they lived” (47), so he inspects their possessions. He reads passages from Mrs. Leeds’s diary and hears her voice on the answering machine. He watches “a reel of Super Eight movie film” (50) which was sent for processing but never collected. The film contains “a pleasant little silent home movie” (51). Graham decides that he likes the Leeds family and wonders how the killer might have watched them. That night, he calls Molly and tells her that he feels “lonesome” (53). When she jokes that he has a “criminal mind” (55), he bristles. After the call, he regrets that he snapped at her.

The Atlanta police shift through the tips and calls. Among the files, they discover that the Jacobi family recently buried their cat. The cat had been “strangled” (58) and buried by the children. Springfield and Graham read Hoyt’s report about the mysterious meter reader. They visit the Leeds house and realize that the back yard extends deep into the woods. They speak to the “increasingly absentminded” (59) Parsons and, through subtle manipulation, manage to extract a vague description of the unknown meter reader. After, Springfield is convinced that they have a “whiff” (65) of the suspect for the first time. He asks Graham about the Lecter case. Graham is reluctant to talk but eventually tells Springfield what he knows. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a brilliant psychiatrist who killed nine people and left two others seriously incapacitated. He is “not crazy” (66), Graham insists, but he simply enjoys doing hideous things and feels no remorse or guilt. Graham caught Lecter because the pattern of injuries on one victim closely resembled a historical medical illustration named Wound Man. Graham visited Lecter and began to suspect him; Lecter attacked him. The police use the description given to them by Parsons to canvas the neighborhood. They debate whether they should publicize what they have or whether doing so would cause the killer to change his behavior. When Crawford returns from a brief sojourn to Washington, Graham tells him that he must “see Lecter” (72).

Dr. Frederick Chilton is the chief of staff at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He briefs Graham on his inmate, Hannibal Lecter. Chilton is fascinated by Graham’s unique psychological profile and mentions the number of professionals who try to study Lecter, none of whom are successful. Lecter, he explains, has been perfectly well-behaved until he complained of a heart issue and was taken to the medical facility. He attacked the nurses, one of whom “managed to save one of her eyes” (74). His pulse never rose over 85, “even when he tore out her tongue” (75). Chilton believes that Lecter is too sophisticated for any psychological test but concedes that the only person who has shown “any practical understanding of Hannibal Lecter” (76) is Graham.

Graham is led to Lecter’s cell. Lecter lays asleep on the bed. He wakes up, recognizing “the same atrocious aftershave [Graham] wore in court” (77). Graham is aware of the ways in which Lecter will try to manipulate him, but he struggles to maintain his composure. As Lecter probes Graham, asking whether Graham understands how he managed to capture Lecter, Graham asks for help with the case. Graham mentions that he had certain advantages when he caught Lecter, such as the fact that Lecter is “insane” (80). Lecter correctly diagnoses the branding of the aftershave that Graham uses. As Graham begins to feel numb, Lecter discusses the “very shy” (82) killer. The killer feels “a special relationship with the moon” (83), Lecter suggests, and recommends that Graham check out the families’ back yards. As Graham leaves the file and prepares to leave the hospital, Lecter announces that he was caught by Graham because he and Graham are “just alike” (83). Feeling even more numb, Graham runs outside. In the parking lot, Freddy Lounds takes a photograph of Graham. When the picture is published in the Tattler, Graham’s face is framed below the words “Criminally Insane” (84) from above the hospital entrance.

In his cell, Lecter thinks about his conversation with Graham. He requests a telephone call to his lawyer but, when the telephone is brought, he instead calls Bloom’s office and convinces his secretary to give him Graham’s home address. He wonders whether he might “surprise” (87) Graham with a call sometime.

Francis Dolarhyde works at a film development laboratory in St. Louis. He has a speech impediment and is self-conscious about his cleft lip and palate. At work, he talks to a woman named Eileen, who apologizes for their colleague, Bob. At a party, Bob was mocking Dolarhyde’s speech. Eileen insists that Bob was drunkenly “clowning around” (88). Dolarhyde accepts the apology. After work, Dolarhyde returns to the “big house his grandparents had left him” (91). He is concerned about security. After a brief inspection of the home, he dresses himself in a kimono and stands before a William Blake painting titled The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. He is obsessed with the painting and begins to feel sexually stimulated. Excited, he views the Leeds family video that Graham watched in the victims’ home. This version has been spliced with scenes of Dolarhyde standing nude before the Blake painting and scenes of the murder itself. Dolarhyde is disappointed by his performance in the film. He feels that the lack of grace is not becoming of the Red Dragon. Next time, he assures himself, he will maintain “some aesthetic distance” (95).

Graham visits Birmingham. He can find no real connection between the Leeds and Jacobi families, but he believes a “common factor” (98) has drawn the killer to these two families. At a real estate office, he takes the keys to the Jacobi house. The house is already in the process of being sold and has been cleaned and redecorated in the month since the murders. Behind the Jacobi house is a wooded area. Graham investigates, driving around the trees to a “low-income housing project” (104) that would better hide the killer’s vehicle. He enters the wooded area, searching for the “vantage point” (106) from which the killer might have watched the children bury the strangled cat. He finds an empty soft drink can and, when he climbs up into a tree, he finds cut branches and a symbol, carved into the bark. Graham descends the tree and returns to his car, wondering whether any of the children in the housing project might have noticed a stranger in a van.