Red Dragon Read Online Free PDF Page B

o’clock this morning, and the funeral is this afternoon at five. We simply can’t delay it.”
    “This won’t take a lot of time,” Price said. “I need one reasonably intelligent assistant, if you have one. Have you touched the bodies, Mr. Lombard?”
    “No.”
    “Find out who has. I’ll have to print them all.”
     
     
     
    The morning briefing of police detectives on the Leeds case was concerned mostly with teeth.
    Atlanta Chief of Detectives R. J. (Buddy) Springfield, a burly man in shirtsleeves, stood by the door with Dr. Dominic Princi as the twenty-three detectives filed in.
    “All right, boys, let’s have the big grin as you come by,” Springfield said. “Show Dr. Princi your teeth. That’s right, let’s see ’em all. Christ, Sparks, is that your tongue or are you swallowing a squirrel? Keep moving.”
    A large frontal view of a set of teeth, upper and lower, was tacked to the bulletin board at the front of the squad room. It reminded Graham of the celluloid strip of printed teeth in a dime-store jack-o’-lantern. He and Crawford sat down at the back of the room while the detectives took their places at schoolroom desks.
    Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner Gilbert Lewis and his public-relations officer sat apart from them in folding chairs. Lewis had to face a news conference in an hour.
    Chief of Detectives Springfield took charge.
    “All right. Let’s cease fire with the bullshit. If you read up this morning, you saw zero progress.
    “House-to-house interviews will continue for a radius of four additional blocks around the scene. R & I has loaned us two clerks to help cross-matching airline reservations and car rentals in Birmingham and Atlanta.
    “Airport and hotel details will make the rounds again today. Yes, again today. Catch every maid and attendant as well as the desk people. He had to clean up somewhere and he may have left a mess. If you find somebody who cleaned up a mess, roust out whoever’s in the room, seal it, and get on the horn to the laundry double quick. This time we’ve got something for you to show around. Dr. Princi?”
    Dr. Dominic Princi, chief medical examiner for Fulton County, walked to the front and stood under the drawing of the teeth. He held up a dental cast.
    “Gentlemen, this is what the subject’s teeth look like. The Smithsonian in Washington reconstructed them from the impressions we took of bite marks on Mrs. Leeds and a clear bite mark in a piece of cheese from the Leedses’ refrigerator,” Princi said.
    “As you can see, he has pegged lateral incisors—the teeth here and here.” Princi pointed to the cast in his hand, then to the chart above him. “The teeth are crooked in alignment and a corner is missing from this central incisor. The other incisor is grooved, here. It looks like a ‘tailor’s notch,’ the kind of wear you get biting thread.”
    “Snaggletoothed son of a bitch,” somebody mumbled.
    “How do you know for sure it was the perpetrator that bit the cheese, Doc?” a tall detective in the front row asked.
    Princi disliked being called “Doc,” but he swallowed it. “Saliva washes from the cheese and from the bite wounds matched for blood type,” he said. “The victims’ teeth and blood type didn’t match.”
    “Fine, Doctor,” Springfield said. “We’ll pass out pictures of the teeth to show around.”
    “What about giving it to the papers?” The public-relations officer, Simpkins, was speaking. “A ‘have-you-seen-these-teeth’ sort of thing.”
    “I see no objection to that,” Springfield said. “What about it, Commissioner?”
    Lewis nodded.
    Simpkins was not through. “Dr. Princi, the press is going to ask why it took four days to get this dental representation you have here. And why it all had to be done in Washington.”
    Special Agent Crawford studied the button on his ballpoint pen.
    Princi reddened but his voice was calm. “Bite marks on flesh are distorted when a body is moved, Mr.