The silence of the lambs

In 1984, five years after the events of Red Dragon, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that creates psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose M.O. involves kidnapping large women, starving them for up to two weeks, killing and skinning them, and dumping the remains in nearby rivers. The nickname originated from Kansas City Homicide as a sick joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Although initially dismissive of Starling's questions, Lecter is offended when another inmate flings his semen at Starling. As an apology, he predicts that Buffalo Bill's next victim will be scalped and tells her to locate a car owned by Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom Lecter eventually murdered. When Starling locates the car in a storage unit, she discovers a severed head preserved in a jar, which Lecter later identifies as Raspail's lover, Klaus. Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in exchange for details about her troubled and bleak childhood as an orphan. Starling must also contend with Dr. Frederick Chilton, the asylum's administrator and Lecter's self-styled nemesis, who makes sexual advances toward Starling and attempts to insert himself into the investigation for his own gain