The Silence Of The Lambs

Gumb sits in his pitch black basement wearing military-grade night vision goggles to watch his moths. The basement is a maze of “rooms from other lives, that Gumb hasn’t opened in years” (203). While waiting for an imago to reach its full wingspan, Gumb surveys the room, noting with monotony the tools of his crimes. He turns back to the moth in time to see the signature wing pattern: a human skull. He leaves the room and peers down the oubliette at a sleeping Catherine. With his goggles, he evaluates her skin and makes judgements about the structure of his garment. He starved his other victims to loosen their skin and make them docile enough to restrain, but Catherine appears to have already been dieting, so Gumb plans to kill her the next day.

Clarice arrives at Catherine’s apartment in Memphis to investigate how Buffalo Bill chose and abducted her. Clarice believes Buffalo Bill stalked Catherine and lured her into the parking lot. A young police officer lets Clarice into the apartment. Clarice begins her search in the kitchen, finding only pre-packaged diet food and a fake jewelry box in the fridge. The Tennessee investigators searched the bedrooms thoroughly, but Clarice looks again through the closet and other furnishings.

Clarice finds a sheet of LSD blotter paper and an envelope of scandalous Polaroid pictures in the hidden jewelry box compartment. She takes these for evidence when the Senator and Paul Krendler from the Department of Justice walk into the room. Both believe Clarice is stealing. Krendler allows the Senator to take the photos. Krendler gives Clarice a transcript of Lecter’s interview and Clarice offers her opinion on Lecter’s true motives. She tries to test the LSD paper with her field kit, but Krendler tells her to return to Quantico, threatening her career if she doesn’t comply.

Clarice drives to the old Memphis courthouse where the police are holding Lecter in a modular cell. News vans surround both the courthouse and Chilton when Clarice arrives. In the building, Clarice claims that Krendler and Chilton both authorized her to see Lecter. Clarice hides a gun under her blazer and gives the other to Sergeant Tate, who allows her through with an escort. Two guards let Clarice through when she mentions previous experience with Lecter, and she approaches the cell.

Clarice confronts Lecter about his information, believing he is toying with the Senator; the information he did give was only to toy with her pain. Clarice knows he can understand everything about a person when he sees them, so she thinks he hasn’t actually met the killer. Still upset at Clarice’s manipulation, Lecter reveals that Clarice can identify Buffalo Bill with only the information in her casefile. He refuses to tell her more until she answers his two questions.

Clarice recalls how she and the horse, Hannah, left the ranch one night when the screams of slaughtered lambs awoke her. She and Hannah went to Bozeman, where Clarice tried to hire a corral for the horse. Her mother’s cousin allowed Clarice and Hannah to stay away at the Bozeman orphanage. Hannah died of natural causes, but Clarice still dreams of the lambs. Satisfied with the honesty of her answers, Lecter returns Clarice’s casefile as Chilton and Officer Pembry take her away. She promises to update Lecter on her dreams, and she leaves for the airport.

Lecter arrives at the Memphis courthouse, where correctional officers Pembry and Boyle await him. The officers thoroughly search Lecter. The metal detector goes off in his mouth, but the officers brush it off as his metal tooth fillings, not espying the homemade handcuff key Lecter hid in his gums. After Clarice leaves, the officers fully restrain Lecter as Chilton brings in his lunch. At the next meal, Pembry and Boyle employ a faster method of restraining Lecter using simple handcuffs. Lecter thanks the officers for their courtesy.

Lecter fakes indigestion and hides behind the toilet’s paper screen. He dislodges the handcuff key—which he made over months in the Baltimore hospital—from his gums. He hides it in his hand and calls for Officer Pembry to take his tray away. The officers go through the motions of handcuffing Lecter, but this time he silently frees himself. As Boyle bends to pick up a napkin, Lecter handcuffs him to the table. He subdues Pembry, biting the officer’s face in the process. He maces Boyle and beats him to death. Lecter kills Pembry with a single hit to the back of the head. He finds their guns, ammunition, and a pocketknife.

In the lobby of the courthouse, Sargent Tate tells Sweeny, a custodian, to check on the unresponsive Pembry and Boyle. As Sweeny tries to bring the elevator down from the fifth floor, the men hear gunshots from above. The elevator moves to the third floor, suggesting Lecter’s escape. Tate sends the police to secure the outside doors and collects a group to investigate. Finding nothing but the open elevator on the third floor, and nothing on the fourth, Tate and his group continue upwards.

On the fifth floor, the policemen find two bodies and assume they are Pembry and Boyle. Officer Jacobs confirms Boyle’s death, and Tate finds that Pembry—who is Lecter in disguise—is still alive. Tate coordinates with a SWAT team and paramedics, who bring Boyle and the disguised Lecter to ambulances. Tate and the remaining police secure the upper floors before descending.

Blood drops fall from the elevator ceiling onto Jacobs. Tate holds the elevator while two SWAT members inspect the elevator car from above. The officers see a man with a gun on the elevator roof, but he isn’t moving or responding. They throw a stun grenade, but the body remains still. SWAT members open the hatch from inside and find that the man—who they assume is Lecter—is dead. An officer rushes forward and identifies the body as Officer Pembry.

In the ambulance, an attendant talks to his supervisor. Lecter, hidden behind his injuries, slips out of the gurney’s restraints. When the attendant turns, Lecter hits him over the head with a gun. Lecter hijacks the ambulance and drives toward the Memphis International Airport.