But at first glance, there seemed to be very little to see except a large trampled-down area surrounding a fire pit and, to the left of the fire, a small heap of something or other that I could not quite see past Camilla Figg’s hunched-over form. Whatever it was, it caused a leathery whir of interest from the Dark Passenger, and I moved forward with just a trace of eagerness — forgetting for the moment that I had forsworn such Dark Pleasures.
“Hi, Camilla,” I said to her as I approached, “what have we got?” She instantly blushed furiously, which was, for some reason, her usual habit when I talked to her.
“Bones,” she said softly.
“No chance they’re from a pig or a goat?” I asked.
She shook her head violently and, in one gloved hand, held up what I thought I recognized as a human humerus, which was not all that funny. “No chance,” she said.
“Well, then,” I said, noticing the charred marks on the bones and listening to the happy sibilant chuckle from within. I could not tell if they had been burned after death, as a way to get rid of the evidence, or —
I looked around the clearing. The ground had been stamped flat; there were hundreds of footprints, indicating a large party, and I didn’t think it could have been the Scouts. They had arrived only this morning, and hadn’t had time to do something like this. The clearing looked like a lot of people had been very active for several hours. Not just standing here, but moving around, jumping up and down, getting rowdy. And all centered around the fire pit, where the bones were, as if —
I closed my eyes, and I could almost see it as I listened to the rising tide of reptilian sound from my soft and deadly inner voice. Look, it said, and in the small window it showed me I saw a large, festive group. A solitary victim tied up by the fire. Not torture, but execution, done by one person — while all the others watched and partied? Was that possible?
And the Passenger chuckled and answered. Yes, it said. Oh, absolutely. Dancing, singing, carrying on. Plenty of beer, plenty of food. A good old-fashioned barbecue.
“Hey,” I said to Camilla, opening my eyes. “Is there anything on the bones that looks like teeth marks?”
Camilla flinched and looked around at me with an expression that was very close to fear. “How did you know?” she said.
“Oh, just a lucky hunch,” I said, but she did not look convinced, so I added, “Any guess at the gender?”
She stared at me for a moment longer, and then appeared to hear my question at last. “Um,” she said, turning back to the bones with a jerk. She raised a gloved finger and pointed it at one of the larger bones. “Pelvic girdle indicates a female. Probably young,” she said.
A little something clicked inside the mighty supercomputer that was Dexter’s brain and a card slid into the out-tray. Young female, the card read. “Oh, um, thanks,” I said to Camilla, backing away to look at this small and interesting idea. Camilla just nodded and bent over the bones.
I looked around the clearing. Over where the trail disappeared deeper into the swamp I saw Lieutenant Keane, chatting with a man I recognized from FDLE, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is sort of a state-level version of the FBI; they have jurisdiction everywhere in Florida. And standing with them was one of the largest men I have ever seen. He was black, about six and a half feet tall, and at least five hundred pounds, which on him did not look particularly fat somehow — possibly because of the focused ferocity of his stare. But since the FDLE guy was talking to him and not calling for backup, I had to assume he belonged here, too, although I had no idea why. If he was representing either the Sheriff’s Department or Broward County I was sure I would have seen him before, or at least heard rumors about someone that large.
But as interesting as it was to see a real giant, it was not enough to hold my attention, and I looked to the other side of the clearing. Across from the small clot of cops there was a clean area of the clearing, where several detectives were standing around. I went there and set my kit down, thinking hard. I knew of a young female who was missing, and I knew someone looking for a young female who would be very interested in making this connection. But what was the right way to do this? I am not really a political animal, although I understand it well enough — politics is just a way to indulge in my former hobby using metaphorical knives instead of real ones. But it seemed like no fun at all to me. All the careful maneuvering and backstabbing were so obvious and pointless and didn’t really lead to anything all that exciting. Still, I knew it was important in a structured environment like the Miami-Dade Police Department. And Deborah was not very good at it, although she usually managed to bull her way through with a combination of toughness and good results.
But Deborah had been so very unlike herself of late, with her pouting and self-pity, and I didn’t know if she was up to a confrontation that was likely to prove extremely political — a different detective was leading on this, and for her to try to yank it away would be difficult, even when she was at her best. Still, maybe a good challenge was just what she needed to bring her back to herself. So perhaps the best thing to do was simply to call her and tell her — let loose the dogs of war and let the chips fall where they may. It was a wonderfully mangled metaphor, which made it seem even more convincing, so I stepped away from the group of cops and reached for my cell phone.
Deborah let it ring several times; again, this was very unlike her. Just when I was ready to give up, she answered. “What,” she said.
“I’m in the Everglades at a crime scene,” I said.
“Good for you,” she said.
“Debs, I think the victim was killed, cooked, and eaten in front of a crowd.”
“Wow, awful,” she said, with no real enthusiasm, which I found a little bit irritating.
“Did I mention that this victim appears to be young and female?” I said.
She didn’t say anything at all for a moment. “Debs?” I said.
“I’m on my way,” she said, with a little bit of the old fire in her voice, and I closed my phone with satisfaction. But before I could put it away and get to work, I heard someone behind me scream, “Fuuuuuck!” and then a volley of gunshots broke out. I ducked down and tried to hide behind my blood-spatter kit, rather difficult considering it was about the size of the average lunch box. But I took what cover I could get and peeked over the top toward the gunfire, half expecting to see a horde of Maori warriors charging at us with their spears raised and their tongues out. What I saw instead was almost as unlikely.
The officers who had been standing around a moment earlier were now all crouched in combat firing position and frantically shooting their weapons into a nearby bush. Contrary to the very best of established police procedure, their faces were not set in cold and grim masks, but looked wild and wide-eyed. One of the detectives was already ejecting an empty clip from his pistol and frantically trying to fumble in a spare, and the others just kept firing with berserk abandon.
And the bush they were apparently trying to kill began to thrash about spastically, and I saw the glint of something silver-yellow. It flashed in the sunlight one time, and then was gone, but the officers kept firing for several more seconds, until finally Lieutenant Keane ran over, yelling at them to hold their fire. “What the fuck is wrong with you idiots?!” Keane yelled at them.
“Lieutenant, I swear to God,” one of them said.
“A snake!” said the second guy. “Fucking huge snake!”
“A snake,” Keane said. “You want me to step on it for you?”
“You got really big feet?” the third guy said. ” ‘Cause it was a Burmese python, about eighteen feet long.”
“Aw, shit,” Keane said. “Are those protected?”
I realized I was still crouched down, and I stood up as the FDLE man sauntered over. “Actually, they’re thinking about a bounty on those bad boys,” the FDLE guy said, “if any of you Wyatt Earps was lucky enough to hit it.”
“I hit it,” the third guy said sullenly.
&n
bsp; “Bullshit,” said one of the others. “You couldn’t hit shit with a shoe.”
The giant black man wandered over to the bush and looked, then turned to the group of nonmarksmen, shaking his head, and, realizing that the excitement was over, I picked up my kit and went back to the fire pit.
There was a surprising amount of blood spatter for me, and in just a few moments I was happily at work, making sense of the nasty stuff. It was not yet completely dry, probably because of the humidity, but a great deal of it had soaked into the ground, since it had not rained for quite some time, and in spite of the moisture in the air, things on the ground were relatively parched at the moment. I got a couple of good samples to take back with me for analysis, and I also began to get a picture of what had probably happened.
The majority of the blood was in one area, right by the fire pit. I cast about in ever-widening circles, but the only traces of it I found more than six feet away appeared to have been tracked there on someone’s shoes. I marked these spots in the forlorn hope that somebody might be able to get an identifiable footprint from them and went back to the main spatter. The blood had poured out of the victim, not spurted, as it would have from a slash wound. And there were no secondary splashes anywhere nearby, which meant that there had been only one wound, like bleeding out a deer — nobody else in the crowd had jumped in and stabbed or slashed. This had been a slow, deliberate killing, a literal butchering, performed by one person, very controlled and businesslike, and I found myself reluctantly admiring the professionalism of the work. That kind of restraint was very difficult, as I well knew — and with a crowd watching, too, presumably shouting drunken encouragement, offering rude suggestions. It was impressive, and I took my time, giving it the kind of reciprocal professionalism it deserved.
I was on one knee, just finishing an examination of a last probable footprint, when I heard raised voices, threats of unpleasant and intimate dismemberment, and assorted profane expressions of anatomical impossibility. It could only mean one thing. I stood up and looked over toward the trailhead, and sure enough, I was right.
Deborah had arrived.
FIFTEEN
It was a pretty good fight, as these things go, and it would have lasted a whole lot longer if not for the FDLE man. He was a guy I knew about by reputation, named Chambers, and he literally stepped in between Deborah and the other detective, a large man named Burris. Putting one hand out onto Burris’s chest, and the other politely in the air in front of Deborah, Chambers said, “Cut it out.” Burris shut up immediately. I saw Debs take a breath to say something, and Chambers looked at her. She looked back and held her breath, and then just let it out silently.
I was impressed, and I edged around to get a better look at the man from the FDLE. He had a shaved head and he was not tall, but as he swung around I could see his face, and I knew why Debs had buttoned her lip, even without the small warning flutter from the Passenger. The man had gunfighter’s eyes, the kind you see on the old pictures of Wild West lawmen. You did not argue with those eyes. It was like looking into two cold, blue pistol barrels.
“Lookit,” Chambers was saying. “We want to solve this thing, not fight about it.” Burris nodded, and Deborah said nothing. “So let Forensics finish up, try to get an ID on the victim. If the lab work says it’s your girl,” he said, nodding at Deborah, “it’s your case. If not” — and he tilted his head to Burris — “go crazy. It’s all yours. Until then” — he looked straight at Debs and, to her great credit, she looked back without whimpering — “you stay quiet and let Burris work. All right?”
“I get access,” Deborah said sullenly.
“Access,” Chambers said. “Not control.”
Debs looked at Burris. He shrugged and looked away. “All right,” she said.
And so the Battle of the Everglades was over, ending happily for everyone — except, of course, for Dexter the Drudge, because Debs apparently interpreted «access» to mean following me around and peppering me with questions. I was almost finished anyway, but it did not make things easier to have a shadow, especially one like Deborah, who was likely to attack me with one of her agonizing arm punches at any moment if I failed to answer her satisfactorily. I filled her in on what I knew and what I had guessed as I sprayed my Bluestar in a few final spots, looking for any last traces of blood. The spray would reveal even the tiniest hint of blood, down to the smallest droplet, and it did not affect the DNA of the sample.
“What is it?” Deborah demanded. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But you’re standing on a footprint.” She stepped aside guiltily and I got my camera out of my bag. I stood and turned back around, bumping squarely into Deborah. “Debs, please,” I said. “I really can’t do this with you attached to my hip.”
“Fine,” she said, and she stalked away to a spot opposite the fire pit.
I had just taken a last picture of the main blood spatter when I heard Deborah calling. “Dex,” she said. “Hey, bring your spray over here.” I looked over to where she stood. Vince Masuoka was kneeling and taking a sample of something. I got my Bluestar and joined them.
“Spray it right here,” Deborah said, and Vince shook his head.
“It’s not blood,” he said. “It’s the wrong color.”
I looked down at the spot he was examining. There was a flattened area, as if a heavy object had stood there backed up against a row of vegetation. The leaves were wilted from heat, and on them, as well as at the edge of the depression, there were a few small brown stains. Something had spilled out from some kind of container that had been there.
“Spray it,” Deborah said.
I looked at Vince, who shrugged. “I got a clean sample already,” he said. “It’s not blood.”
“All right,” I said, and I sprayed a small spot on one of the bushes.
Almost immediately a very faint blue glow was visible. “Not blood,” Debs said scornfully. “So what the fuck is that?”
“Shit,” Vince mumbled.
“It’s not much blood,” I said. “The glow is too faint.”
“But it’s some blood?” Debs demanded.
“Well, yes,” I said.
“So it’s some other kind of shit, with blood in it,” she said.
I looked at Vince. “Well,” he said. “I guess so.”
Deborah nodded and looked around. “So you got a party,” she said. She pointed at the fire pit. “And way over there you got the victim. And way over here on the other side of the party you got this.” She glared at Vince. “With blood in it.” She turned to me. “So what is it?” she demanded.
I should not have been surprised that this was suddenly my problem, but I was. “Come on, Debs,” I said.
“No, you come on,” she said. “I need one of your special hunches here.”
“I have a special hunch back at the station,” Vince said. “His name is Ivan.”
“Shut up, dickless,” Deborah said. “Come on, Dexter.”
Apparently there was nothing for it, so I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and listened…
And almost immediately got a very amused answer from the Passenger. “Punch bowl,” I said, snapping my eyes open.
“What?” Deborah said.
“It’s the punch bowl,” I said. “For the party.”
“With human blood in it?” she said.
“Punch?” Vince said. “Jesus’ tits, Dex, you’re a sick fuck.”
“Hey,” I said innocently, “I didn’t drink any of it.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Deborah added helpfully.
“Debs, look,” I said. “It’s away from the fire, and we got this dent in the ground.” I knelt next to Vince and pointed to the depression in the dirt. “Something heavy, stuff spilled out to the sides, lots of footprints around it — you don’t have to call it punch if that makes you nervous. But it’s the beverage.”
Deborah stared at the spot I pointed to, looked across the clearing at the fire pit, and the
n back to the ground at her feet. She shook her head slowly, dropped into a squat beside me, and said, “Punch bowl. Fuck.”
“You’re a sick fuck,” Vince repeated.
“Yeah,” Debs said. “But I think he’s right.” She stood up. “I bet you a dozen doughnuts you find some kind of drug traces in there, too,” she said with a very noticeable note of satisfaction.
“I’ll check it,” Vince said. “I got a good test for ecstasy.” He gave her his hideous sex leer and added, “Would you like to take the ecstasy test with me?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “You don’t have the pencil for it.” She turned away before he could try one of his awful comebacks, and I followed. It took me only three steps to realize that something about her was very wrong, and when it registered I stopped dead and turned her to face me.
I looked at my sister with surprise. “Debs,” I said. “You’re actually smiling.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Because we just proved that this is my case.”
“What do you mean?”
She punched me, hard. It may have been a happy punch for her, but it still hurt me. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Who drinks blood?”
“Ouch,” I said. “Bela Lugosi?”
“Him and all the other vampires,” she said. “You want me to spell ‘vampire’ for you?”
“So what — Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, oh,” she said. “We turn up a vampire wannabe, Bobby Acosta. And now we got a whole fucking vampire frat party. You think that’s a coincidence?”
I didn’t think so, but my arm hurt too much to say so. “We’ll see,” I said.
“Yes, we will,” she said. “Get your stuff; I’ll drive you back.”
It was definitely lunchtime when we got back to civilization, but none of the subtle hints I threw out to Debs seemed to register, and she drove straight back to headquarters without pausing, in spite of the fact that Route 41 turns into Calle Ocho, and we could easily have pulled over at a number of excellent Cuban restaurants. Just thinking about them made my stomach growl, and I imagined I could smell the platanos sizzling in the frying pan. But as far as Deborah was concerned, the wheels of justice were already in motion, grinding their inexorable way toward a guilty verdict and a safer world, which apparently meant that Dexter could very well do without lunch for society’s sake.
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